REALIZABLE 
IDEALS 

(THE  EARL  LECTURES) 


BY 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 


SAN   FRANCISCO 

WHITAKER  &•  RAY-WIGGIN  CO. 
1912 


COPYRIGHT 
BY 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 

1911 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  addresses  printed  in  this  volume  were 
delivered  under  the  auspices  of  Pacific 
Theological  Seminary  by  the  Hon.  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  as  Earl  Lecturer,  in  the  Spring  of 
1911.  The  Seminary  is  fortunate  in  possessing 
a  Lectureship  founded  by  Mr.  Edwin  T.  Earl  in 
1901,  whose  purpose,  as  stated  in  the  articles  of 
foundation,  is  "to  aid  in  securing  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  California  the  presentation  of  Christian 
truth  by  bringing  to  Berkeley  year  by  year  emi- 
nent Christian  scholars  and  thinkers  to  speak 
upon  themes  calculated  to  illustrate  and  dissem- 
inate Christian  thought  and  minister  to  Christian 
life."  The  uncommon  public  interest  which  this 
series  of  lectures  aroused,  and  the  attendance  of 
many  thousands  who  daily  crowded  the  Greek 
Theatre  to  hear  them,  emphasized  to  the  Lecture- 
ship Committee  the  desirability  of  yielding  to  a 
wide-spread  demand  for  their  publication.  Since 
Mr.  Roosevelt  did  not  have  a  manuscript,  ar- 
rangements were  made  for  an  accurate  steno- 
graphic report,  which  was  afterwards  submitted 
to  him  for  revision.  So  much  should  be  said  in 
explanation  of  the  forensic  form  of  these  lectures. 
Their  fine  ethical  purpose  justifies  the  hope  that 
they  may  continue  to  stimulate  good  citizenship 
in  wider  circles  than  those  which  came  within 
reach  of  the  speaker's  voice. 

WILLIAM  FREDERIC  BADE. 

September,  1911. 

Pacific  Theological  Seminary, 

Berkeley,  California, 


2075534 


REALIZABLE   IDEALS 

When  I  was  first  asked  to  deliver  this 
course  of  lectures  I  refused  just  because 
what  I  wanted  to  preach  was  action. 
I  did  not  feel  sure  that  I  could  preach 
action  in  five  lectures.  I  finally  accept- 
ed, because  it  seemed  to  me  so  admirable 
a  thing  for  the  Seminary  to  have  started 
this  kind  of  a  lecture  course  and  so  ad- 
mirable a  thing  for  the  founder  of  the 
course  to  have  provided  for  it  that  I  did 
not  feel  quite  at  liberty  to  refuse. 

All  our  extraordinary  material  de- 
velopment, our  wonderful  industrial 
growth  will  go  for  nothing  unless  with 
that  growth  goes  hand  in  hand  the 
moral,  the  spiritual  growth  that  will  en- 
able us  to  use  aright  the  other  as  an 
instrument.  I  hesitated  some  time  as  to 
exactly  what  title  to  give  to  the  lectures 
I  was  to  deliver  because  I  wanted  to 


Realisable  Ideals 


use  the  two  titles  of  Applied  Ethics 
and  Realizable  Ideals.  I  chose  these 
titles  because  they  seemed  to  me  to  put 
into  words  the  only  spirit  which  I 
think  counts  for  anything  in  preaching, 
whether  by  a  professional  or  by  an  ama- 
teur; the  spirit  which  regards  preaching 
as  worthless  unless  transmitted  into 
action.  If  we  treat  the  study  of  ethics 
as  a  mere  intellectual  diversion  then  we 
probably  do  ourselves  little  harm  and 
certainly  do  ourselves  no  good.  If  we 
consciously  or  carelessly  preach  ideals 
which  cannot  be  realized  and  which  we 
do  not  intend  to  have  realized,  then  so 
far  from  accomplishing  a  worthy  pur- 
pose we  actually  tend  to  weaken  the 
morality  we  ostensibly  preach.  Now, 
anything  I  have  to  say  to  you  during 
these  lectures  will  derive  its  whole  value 
from  the  spirit  in  me  as  I  say  it  and  the 

2 


Realisable   Ideals 


spirit  in  you  as  you  listen  to  it.  If  I 
preach  to  you  anything  which  I  do 
not  strive,  with  whatever  haltings  and 
shortcomings,  myself  to  realize  then  I 
am  unworthy  for  you  to  listen  to;  and 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  you  come  to  listen 
to  me  from  mere  curiosity,  or  to  get  a 
little  temporary  enjoyment,  then  you 
would  better  have  stayed  at  home. 

I  chose  as  the  opening  lecture  this  ad- 
dress on  realizable  ideals,  because  the 
longer  I  have  lived  the  more  strongly  I 
have  felt  the  harm  done  by  the  practice 
among  so  many  men  of  keeping  their 
consciences  in  separate  compartments; 
sometimes  a  Sunday  conscience  and  a 
weekday  conscience;  sometimes  a  con- 
science as  to  what  they  say  or  what  they 
like  other  people  to  say,  and  another 
conscience  as  to  what  they  do  and  like 
other  people  to  do;  sometimes  a  con- 

3 


Realisable   Ideals 


science  for  their  private  affairs  and  a 
totally  different  conscience  for  their 
business  relations.  Or  again,  there  may 
be  one  compartment  in  which  the  man 
keeps  his  conscience  not  only  for  his 
domestic  affairs  but  for  his  business 
affairs  and  a  totally  different  compart- 
ment in  which  he  keeps  his  conscience 
when  he  deals  with  public  men  and  pub- 
lic measures. 

It  has  always  irritated  me  when,  in 
whatever  capacity,  I  have  attended  Sun- 
day School  celebrations,  to  listen  to 
some  of  the  speeches  made,  and  espe- 
cially when  I  knew  some  of  the  men 
making  them.  I  have  always  felt  most 
strongly  that  it  was  mischievous  and 
wrong  for  a  man  to  get  up  before  a  num- 
ber of  boys  and  girls  and  preach  to  them 
to  "take  no  thought  of  things  of  the 
body,"  not  "to  regard  their  own  inter- 

4 


Realisable   Ideals 


ests  in  any  way/'  to  think  of  "nothing 
whatever  but  others,"  when  they  knew 
that  he  did  not  follow  any  such  course 
of  action  himself,  and  when  they  knew 
that  they  themselves  could  not  act  and 
were  not  expected  to  act,  literally  on  his 
words.  That  kind  of  a  speech  does 
harm,  because  harm  is  always  done  by 
preaching  an  ideal  which  the  preacher 
and  the  hearer  know  cannot  be  followed, 
which  they  know  it  is  not  intended  to 
have  followed;  for  then  the  hearer  con- 
founds all  ideals  with  the  false  ideal  to 
which  he  is  listening;  and  because  he 
finds  that  he  is  not  expected  to  live  up 
to  the  doctrine  to  which  he  has  listened 
he  concludes  that  it  is  needless  to  live 
up  to  any  doctrine  at  all. 

Now  I  do  not  mean  for  a  moment  that 
the  ideal  preached  should  be  a  low  one; 
I  do  not  mean  for  a  moment  that  it  is 


Realisable   Ideals 


ever  possible  entirely  to  realize  even  for 
the  very  best  man  or  woman  the  loftiest 
ideal;  but  I  do  mean  that  the  ideal 
should  not  be  preached  except  with  sin- 
cerity, and  that  it  should  be  preached 
in  such  a  fashion  as  to  make  it  possible 
measurably  to  approach  it. 

Take  the  Sunday  School  address  of 
the  type  to  which  I  object  and  of  which 
I  have  just  spoken :  If  you  tell  a  number 
of  boys  who  are  about  to  become  men 
and  go  out  to  earn  their  own  living — if 
you  tell  them  to  despise  the  things  of 
the  body,  to  care  nothing  for  material 
success,  you  are  telling  them  what  you 
would  not  want  your  own  boys  actually 
to  do;  you  are  telling  them  what  they 
cannot  do  unless  they  are  willing  to  be- 
come public  charges,  and  what  it  is  not 
desirable  that  they  should  try  to  do.  To 
tell  them  such  things  in  the  name  of 

6 


Realisable   Ideals 


morality  is  to  invite  them  to  despise 
morality.  What  is  necessary  is  to  tell 
them  that  their  first  duty  is  to  earn  their 
own  livelihood,  to  support  themselves 
and  those  dependent  upon  them;  but 
that  when  that  first  duty  has  been  per- 
formed there  yet  remains  a  very  large 
additional  duty,  in  the  way  of  service 
to  their  neighbor,  of  service  to  the  rest 
of  mankind. 

Again,  I  have  heard  men,  whose  lives 
have  been  passed  chiefly  in  amassing 
money,  preach  to  boys  that  money 
was  of  no  real  consequence,  that  they 
ought  to  disregard  it,  that  it  was  really 
entirely  unimportant.  Well,  those  men 
did  not  in  practice  believe  what  they 
preached.  Curiously  enough  some  of 
them  had  for  so  many  years  schooled 
themselves  to  utter  that  kind  of  a  sen- 
tence when  they  got  on  a  platform,  and 

7 


Realizable   Ideals 


to  act  in  such  diametrically  opposite 
fashion  when  they  were  in  their  business 
offices,  that  they  had  ceased  to  become 
conscious  of  any  incongruity;  when 
they  got  up  to  speak  they  naturally  fell 
into  the  very  vice  that  represented  the 
negation  of  the  other  vice  into  which 
they  equally  naturally  fell  as  soon  as 
they  sat  down  before  their  counting- 
desk.  Now,  it  is  a  false  statement,  and 
therefore  it  is  a  disservice  to  the  cause 
of  morality,  to  tell  any  man  that  money 
does  not  count.  If  he  has  not  got  it  he 
will  find  that  it  does  count  tremendous- 
ly. If  he  is  worth  his  salt  and  is  desir- 
ous of  caring  for  mother  and  sisters, 
wife  and  children,  he  will  not  only  find 
that  it  counts  but  he  will  realize  that  he 
has  acted  with  infamy  and  with  baseness 
if  he  has  not  appreciated  the  fact  that 
it  does  count.  And  of  course,  when  I 
8 


Realisable   Ideals 


speak  of  money  I  mean  what  money 
stands  for.  It  counts  tremendously. 
No  man  has  any  right  to  the  respect  of 
his  fellows  if  through  any  fault  of  his 
own  he  has  failed  to  keep  those  depend- 
ent upon  him  in  reasonable  comfort.  It 
is  his  duty  not  to  despise  money.  It  is 
his  duty  to  regard  money,  up  to  the 
point  where  his  wife  and  children  and 
any  other  people  dependent  upon  him 
have  food,  clothing,  shelter,  decent  sur- 
roundings, the  chance  for  the  children  to 
get  a  decent  education,  the  chance  for 
the  children  to  train  themselves  to  do 
their  life  work  aright,  a  chance  for 
wife  and  children  to  get  reasonable  re- 
laxation. Now  practically,  as  regards 
his  or  her  own  family,  I  doubt  if  there  is 
anyone  here  who  would  deny  that  prop- 
osition. It  is  so  obvious  that  it  seems 
needless  to  put  it  before  you;  and  yet 
9 


Realisable   Ideals 


how  often  do  we  listen  to  a  man  on  a 
platform  like  this,  saying,  because  it  is 
the  conventional  thing  to  say,  "pay  no 
heed  to  money."  Now,  of  course,  when 
such  a  preacher  says  "pay  no  heed  to 
money"  his  hearers  at  once  accept  what 
he  is  about  to  say  further  as  insincere; 
and,  whether  they  pay  heed  to  money 
or  not,  they  pay  no  further  heed  to  what 
he  says  about  it. 

It  is  not  a  realizable  ideal,  to  "pay  no 
heed  to  money."  You  must  pay  heed 
up  to  the  point  I  have  indicated.  But 
it  is  a  realizable  ideal,  after  you  have 
once  reached  that  point,  to  understand 
that  money  is  merely  a  means  to  an  end, 
and  that  if  you  make  it  the  end  instead 
of  a  means  you  do  little  good  to  your- 
self and  are  a  curse  to  everybody  else. 
It  is  a  realizable  ideal,  to  make  people 
understand  that  while  it  is  their  first 
10 


Realisable   Ideals 


duty  to  pull  their  own  weight  in  the 
world,  yet  that  after  they  have  achieved 
a  certain  amount  of  prosperity  both 
their  capacity  for  usefulness  toward 
others  and  their  capacity  for  enjoyment 
depends  infinitely  more  on  other  things 
than  upon  possessing  additional  money. 
Now,  the  very  fact  that  I  grant  in  the 
fullest  degree  the  need  of  having  enough 
money,  which  means  the  need  of  suffi- 
cient material  achievement  to  enable 
you  and  those  dependent  upon  you  to 
lead  your  lives  healthily  and  under  de- 
cent conditions — the  very  fact  that  I 
grant  this  as  the  essential  first  need  to 
meet,  entitles  me  to  have  you  accept 
what  I  say  at  its  face  value  when  I  add 
that  this  represents  only  the  beginning, 
and  that  after  you  have  reached  this 
point  your  worth  as  a  unit  in  the  com- 
monwealth, your  worth  to  others  and 

11 


Realisable   Ideals 


your  worth  to  yourself,  depends  infin- 
itely less  upon  having  additional  money 
than  it  depends  upon  your  possessing 
certain  other  things,  things  of  the  soul 
and  the  spirit. 

I  could  not  overstate  the  grinding 
misery,  the  heart-breaking  misery,  I 
have  seen  come  to  a  family  where  the 
man  is  unable  quite  to  do  what  he  ought 
to  for  those  dependent  upon  him.  But 
after  the  man  and  the  woman  have 
reached  the  point  where  they  have  a 
home  in  which  the  elemental  needs  are 
met  and  where  in  addition  they  have 
accumulated  a  comparatively  small 
amount  of  money  necessary  to  meet  the 
primal  needs  of  the  spirit  and  of  the 
intellect — after  this  point  is  reached  it 
is  my  deliberate  judgment  that  money, 
instead  of  being  the  prime  factor,  is  one 
of  the  minor  factors,  both  in  usefulness 

12 


Realisable   Ideals 


and  in  happiness.  Always  keep  in  mind 
my  first  proviso — I  am  not  going  to  re- 
peat it  to  you — as  to  the  necessity  of 
having  enough  money.  But  go  beyond 
that ;  for  beyond  that,  the  difference  be- 
tween the  multi-millionaire  and  the  man 
of  very  moderate  fortune  is  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases  really  a  difference  of 
appearance  and  not  of  reality  as  regards 
both  usefulness  and  happiness.  The 
chief  harm  that  the  multi-millionaire 
does  in  my  mind  comes  not  in  his  join- 
ing with  others  to  make  a  trust — al- 
though when  he  does  that  I  will  try  to 
regulate  him — and  it  is  not  in  the  fact 
that  in  him  as  in  other  men  there  is,  as 
Abraham  Lincoln  put  it,  "a  deal  of 
human  nature,"  so  that  he  is  sometimes 
very  good  and  sometimes  not  good  at 
all;  it  is  that  he  is  apt  to  give  to  the  rest 
of  us  a  thoroughly  false  ideal.  The 
13 


Realisable   Ideals 


worst  ill  that  can  befall  us  is  to  have 
our  own  souls  corrupted,  and  it  is  a  de- 
basing thing  for  a  nation  to  choose  as 
its  heroes  the  men  of  mere  wealth. 

I  remember  a  number  of  years  ago 
seeing  a  pleasant  and  very  happy  little 
community  very  nearly  ruined — and  as 
regards  many  of  the  families  completely 
ruined — because  an  entirely  amiable 
multi-millionaire  moved  into  the  neigh- 
borhood. I  really  think  that  his  amia- 
bility and  his  perfectly  sincere  desire  to 
be  pleasant  with  everyone  was  one  of 
the  causes  of  the  mischief.  I  know,  for 
instance,  a  very  nice  woman  there,  with 
a  charming  little  house,  who,  having 
been  asked  to  dinner  at  the  very  gor- 
geous mansion  of  this  worthy  soul  of 
many  millions,  naturally  wished  to  en- 
tertain him  and  his  wife  in  return.  But, 
alas,  she  was  perfectly  wretched  when  it 
14 


Realisable   Ideals 


actually  came  to  entertaining  them  in 
her  house;  she  was  not  willing  to  have 
the  hired  girl  wait  on  the  table;  she 
had  to  have  a  butler,  and  then  she  had 
to  live  up  to  the  butler.  And  the  fun- 
ny thing  was  instead  of  giving  the 
multi-millionaire  a  perfectly  pleasant 
time  in  her  own  fashion,  which  she 
could  have  done,  she  merely  gave  him  a 
dreary  tenth-rate  imitation  of  his  own 
feasts.  Instead  of  putting  herself  in  a 
totally  different  class,  so  that  there 
could  be  no  competition  between  them 
at  all,  she  insisted  on  competing  in  a 
class  where  she  was  certain  to  get  the 
worst  of  it.  After  two  or  three  years  of 
the  millionaire's  residence  in  the  neigh- 
borhood there  were  not  a  few  families 
who  had  suffered  either  some  perma- 
nent damage  or  grave  temporary  dis- 
comfort, not  from  any  fault  of  the  mil- 
15 


Realisable   Ideals 


lionaire,  but  because  they  themselves 
had  been  foolish.  Now,  I  don't  want  to 
preach  against  the  millionaire;  but  I  do 
want  to  preach  against  us  if  we  let  him 
make  us  spoil  ourselves — that's  all. 

I  wish  us  to  understand  better  than 
we  now  do  what  are  the  real  things  and 
what  are  the  artificial  things  of  life.  I 
wish  us  to  get  a  better  perspective. 
Take  even  the  average  educational  in- 
stitution; if  a  very  wealthy  man  visits 
it  altogether  too  many  of  the  boys  look 
at  him  with  eager  interest,  as  a  man  that 
has  had  just  the  career  that  they  intend 
to  emulate;  and  altogether  too  many  of 
the  girls  think  that  they  would  like  to 
marry  into  his  class !  Now,  in  that  case, 
I  don't  blame  him  at  all;  I  think  it  mere- 
ly adds  to  our  sin,  to  our  iniquity,  if  we 
blame  him  instead  of  ourselves  for  the 
feelings,  not  that  he  has  about  us,  but 

16 


Realisable   Ideals 


that  we  have  about  him.  But  I  do  blame 
ourselves;  I  blame  us  if  we  do  not  have 
a  proper  sense  of  perspective,  if  we  fail 
to  pay  honor  to  the  people  who  are  enti- 
tled to  it.  I  do  not  wonder  that  a  great 
many  men  make  of  money-getting  their 
one  ideal  when  so  many  of  their  fellow 
countrymen  treat  success  in  making 
money  as  the  chief  kind  of  success. 

When  America's  history  is  written, 
when  the  history  of  the  last  century  in 
America  is  written  a  hundred  years 
hence,  the  name  of  no  multi-millionaire, 
who  is  nothing  but  a  multi-millionaire, 
will  appear  in  that  history,  unless  it 
appears  in  some  foot-note  to  illustrate 
some  queer  vagary  or  extravagance. 
The  men  who  will  loom  large  in  our 
history  are  the  men  of  real  achievement 
of  the  kind  that  counts.  You  can  go 
over  them — statesmen,  soldiers,  wise 

17 


Realisable   Ideals 


philanthropists — I  wish  to  underscore 
the  word  "wise,"  for  the  philanthropist 
who  is  really  worth  calling  such  is  the 
man  who  tries  to  make  such  use  of  his 
philanthropy  as  to  provide  against  the 
need  of  philanthropy  in  the  future,  just 
as  the  real  worker  in  charity  is  the 
worker  who  does  his  best  to  bring  about 
conditions  in  which  charity  shall  not  be 
necessary.  The  statesman,  the  writer, 
the  man  of  science,  of  letters,  of  art, 
these  are  the  men  who  will  leave  their 
mark  on  history. 

When  you  look  back  and  think  of  the 
Civil  War,  what  lives  of  those  who  then 
lived  would  you,  if  you  had  a  chance, 
like  yourselves  to  have  lived?  Not  the 
lives  of  the  sordid  souls  who  stayed  at 
home  and  made  money  out  of  the  Civil 
War;  not  even  the  lives  of  those  men 
who  were  not  sordid,  who  acted  honora- 
18 


Realisable   Ideals 


bly  in  their  private  business  at  home, 
but  who  did  not  have  the  opportunity 
and  privilege  of  going  to  the  front.  The 
lives  that  you  respect,  the  lives  that  you 
wish  your  fathers  or  forefathers  to  have 
led,  are  those  of  the  men  who  in  the 
time  of  the  Nation's  trial  each  endeav- 
ored to  render  all  the  service  that  could 
possibly  be  rendered  to  the  nation. 
Those  are  the  men  of  the  past  to  whose 
memory  we  look  up,  of  whose  fame  we 
as  Americans  are  jealous,  whose  good 
deeds  we  would  like  to  emulate.  Now, 
that  is  our  attitude  toward  the  past;  I 
ask  that  we  make  it  also  our  attitude  in 
the  present. 

I  wish  it  distinctly  to  be  understood 
that  I  have  not  the  smallest  prejudice 
against  multi-millionaires.  I  like  them. 
But  I  always  feel  this  way  when  I  meet 
one  of  them :  You  have  made  millions — 

19 


Realisable   Ideals 


good;  that  shows  you  must  have  some- 
thing in  you,  I  wish  you  would  show  it. 

I  do  regard  it  as  a  realizable  ideal  for 
our  people  as  a  whole  to  demand,  not  of 
the  millionaire — not  at  all — but  of  their 
own  children  and  of  themselves,  that 
they  shall  get  the  millionaire  in  his 
proper  perspective,  and  when  they  once 
do  that  ninety-five  per  cent  of  what  is 
undesirable  in  the  power  of  the  million- 
aire will  disappear.  I  shall  speak  of  the 
other  five  per  cent  in  a  minute  or  two; 
but  I  am  speaking  now  of  much  the 
larger  part  of  what  makes  him  undesir- 
able; and  much  of  that  larger  part  is 
not  in  him  at  all,  it  is  in  us;  it  is  in  the 
emotions  we  permit  the  sight  of  him  to 
produce  in  us. 

Now,  a  word  to  my  fellow  reformers. 
If  they  permit  themselves  to  adopt  an 
attitude  of  hate  and  envy  toward  the 
20 


Realisable   Ideals 


millionaire  they  are  just  about  as  badly 
off  as  if  they  adopt  an  attitude  of  mean 
subservience  to  him.  It  is  just  as  much 
a  confession  of  inferiority  to  feel  mean 
hatred  and  defiance  of  a  man  as  it  is  to 
feel  a  mean  desire  to  please  him  over- 
much. In  each  case  it  means  that  the 
man  having  the  emotion  is  not  confident 
in  himself,  that  he  lacks  self-confidence, 
self-reliance,  that  he  does  not  stand  on 
his  own  feet;  and,  therefore,  in  each  case 
it  is  an  admission  that  the  man  is  not  as 
good  as  the  man  whom  he  hates  and 
envies,  or  before  whom  he  truckles. 

So  that  I  shall  preach  as  an  ideal 
neither  to  truckle  to  nor  to  hate  the  man 
of  mere  wealth,  because  if  you  do  either 
you  admit  your  inferiority  in  reference 
to  him;  and  if  you  admit  that  you  are 
inferior  as  compared  to  him  you  are  no 
good  American,  you  have  no  place  in 
21 


Realizable   Ideals 


this  Republic.  So  that  from  our  stand- 
point toward  the  millionaire  ninety-five 
per  cent  of  the  damage  he  can  do  us  is 
subjective  and  not  objective;  that  is  to 
say,  it  rests  with  us  and  not  with  him. 
There  remains  the  five  per  cent  of 
harm  that  he  can  do  us  for  which  we  are 
not  responsible.  Up  to  this  point  I  have 
been  preaching  to  us  about  him.  Now 
I  want  to  say  a  word  or  two  to  him,  to 
the  man  of  great  wealth.  The  mere  ac- 
quisition of  wealth  in  and  by  itself,  be- 
yond a  certain  point,  speaks  very  little 
indeed  for  the  man  compared  with  suc- 
cess in  most  other  lines  of  endeavor.  I 
want  you  to  weigh  the  words  that  I  have 
used — the  mere  acquisition  of  wealth  in 
itself.  I  know  that  there  are  many  men 
who  have  made  great  fortunes  where 
the  making  of  the  great  fortune  has 
been  an  incident  to  the  doing  of  a  great 
22 


Realisable   Ideals 


task,  where  the  man  has  really  been  at 
least  as  much  interested  in  the  task  as 
in  the  fortune.  It  is  a  great  epic  feat  to 
drive  a  railroad  across  a  continent;  it  is 
a  great  epic  feat  to  build  up  a  business 
worth  building.  For  the  man  who  per- 
forms that  feat  I  have  a  genuine  regard. 
For  the  man  who  makes  a  great  fortune 
as  an  incident  to  rendering  a  great  serv- 
ice I  have  nothing  but  admiration — al- 
though unfortunately  the  men  who  are 
entitled  to  our  regard,  and  a  little  more 
— to  our  admiration — for  the  feats  that 
they  have  thus  done,  have  too  often  for- 
feited all  right  to  that  regard  and  ad- 
miration and  more  than  forfeited  it  by 
the  course  that  they  have  afterwards,  or 
coincidently,  pursued  in  regard  to  mon- 
ey making  or  in  other  matters;  Further- 
more the  wealthy  men  who  make  money 
which  does  not  represent  service  are 
23 


Realisable   Ideals 


public  enemies;  we  are  bound  to  make 
war  against  every  form  of  special  privi- 
lege. 

We  have  now  definitely  accepted  as 
axiomatic  the  fact  that  in  this  country 
we  have  to  control  the  use  of  enormous 
aggregations  of  wealth  in  business.  But 
no  great  industrial  chief  should  be  con- 
tent to  do  only  so  much  as  is  necessary 
to  keep  within  the  law.  He  may  be  "law 
honest,"  and  yet  be  a  sinister  enemy  of 
the  commonwealth. 

One  great  realizable  ideal  for  our  peo- 
ple is  to  discourage  mere  law  honesty. 
It  is  necessary  to  have  good  laws  and  to 
have  them  well  enforced.  But  the  best 
laws  and  the  most  rigid  enforcement 
will  not  by  themselves  produce  a  really 
healthy  type  of  morals  in  the  commun- 
ity. In  addition  to  the  law  and  its  en- 
forcement we  must  have  the  public 
24 


Realisable   Ideals 


opinion  which  frowns  on  the  man  who 
violates  the  spirit  of  the  law  even  al- 
though he  keeps  just  within  the  letter. 
I  cannot  tell  you  any  one  way  in  which 
that  feeling  can  be  made  to  carry 
weight.  I  think  it -must  find  expression 
in  a  dozen  different  ways.  Later  in  one 
of  these  lectures  I  shall  discuss  the  or- 
gans of  public  opinion  and  public  ex- 
pression— the  press  and  the  magazines. 
When  they  more  measurably  reach  the 
ideal  they  ought  to,  we  shall  be  able  to 
grapple  more  effectually  with  the  man 
of  wealth  who  fails  in  his  duty  than 
we  do  at  present.  But  without  waiting 
for  that  day,  we  should  strive  to  create 
in  the  community  the  sense  of  propor- 
tion which  will  make  us  respect  the  de- 
cent man  who  does  well,  and  condemn 
the  man  who  does  not  act  decently  and 
who  does  wrong. 

25 


Realisable   Ideals 


The  other  day  a  sentence  was  uttered 
in  the  Senate  by  a  certain  Senator  which 
I  thought  was  fraught — quite  uncon- 
sciously fraught — with  a  lesson  for  all 
of  us.  The  Senator  in  question  had 
been  engaged  in  an  impassioned  speech 
on  behalf  of  Mr.  Lorimer,  and  in  speak- 
ing of  some  of  the  unsavory  creatures 
who  had  testified  in  the  case  he  said  in 
answer  to  a  question,  "Yes,  they  were 
fools  as  well  as  knaves,"  and  that  in  his 
experience  all  knaves  were  fools. 

That  is  not  so.  This  Senator  was  giv- 
ing expression  to  a  very  unhealthy  atti- 
tude of  the  public  mind,  the  tendency  to 
treat  as  a  knave  only  the  foolish  knave, 
and  to  pardon  the  wise  knave  who  man- 
aged to  succeed  in  his  villainy.  We 
shall  never  come  near  realizing  the  very 
realizable  ideal  of  honesty  in  business 
and  public  life  until  we  make  it  evident 
26 


Realisable   Ideals 


that  the  scoundrel  whom  we  hate  most 
is  not  the  scoundrel  who  fails  but  the 
scoundrel  who  succeeds.  The  scoun- 
drel who  fails  is  condemned  by  every- 
one and  is  laughed  at  by  his  fellow- 
knaves.  It  is  the  scoundrel  who  wins 
out  that  is  the  menace  to  this  Republic, 
the  menace  to  this  great  commonwealth 
of  ours.  Let  us  so  shape  our  laws  as  to 
make  it  difficult  for  the  scoundrel  to 
succeed,  and  to  give  us  at  least  a  rea- 
sonable chance  of  punishing  him  after 
he  succeeds.  In  addition  to  this,  let  us 
also,  each  of  us  individually  and  all  of 
us  collectively,  strive  to  create  the  kind 
of  public  opinion  which  will  make  the 
success  of  such  a  scoundrel  hardly  worth 
having.  The  dullest  man,  the  man  with 
the  thickest  skin,  does  not  enjoy  very 
much  a  success  which  brings  on  him  the 
scorn  of  his  fellows.  The  old  Greek 

27 


Realisable   Ideals 


proverb  was  that  "contempt  would 
pierce  the  shell  of  a  tortoise,"  and  what- 
ever our  people  really  scorn,  really  de- 
spise, really  condemn,  is  something  that 
the  knaves  among  us  rarely  care  to 
have.  When  we  can  create  the  public 
opinion  which  will  mean  that  the  aver- 
age honest  man  turns  away  from  the 
successful  knave  one  of  the  prime  in- 
centives for  being  a  successful  knave 
will  have  vanished. 

To  that  end,  friends,  I  again  wish  to 
say  that  we  must  hold  up  an  ideal  that 
can  be  realized.  If  we  use  language 
which  would  go  to  show  that  we  regard 
success  and  failure  in  the  business  world 
as  of  indifference,  then  we  shall  merely 
convince  every  man  in  that  world  that 
we  are  speaking  insincerely.  You  do 
not  regard  success  and  failure  with  in- 
difference. You  do  not  regard  the  man 

28 


Realizable   Ideals 


who  fails  and  the  man  who  succeeds  as 
standing  on  the  same  plane;  and  as  long 
as  you  do  not  so  regard  it,  tell  the  truth 
about  it.  No  man  ever  permanently 
helped  a  reform  by  lying  on  behalf  of 
the  reform.  Tell  the  truth  about  it;  and 
then  you  can  expect  to  be  believed  when 
you  tell  further  truths;  the  truth  that 
business  success,  though  an  admirable 
thing,  up  to  a  certain  point  an  absolutely 
necessary  thing,  is  beyond  that  point 
not  as  admirable  as  some  other  things; 
and  the  truth  that  business  success  ob- 
tained, not  by  serving  your  fellows  but 
by  swindling  your  fellows,  is  an  infamy 
and  is  to  be  so  regarded  by  all  honest 
men. 

Realizable  ideals;  we  must  have  them 
in  private  and  in  public  life  both.  I  have 
already  told  you  of  one  type  of  sermon 
to  which  I  strongly  object.  There  is 

29 


Realisable   Ideals 


another  type  to  which  I  object  almost 
as  strongly,  and  that  is  the  sermon 
which  in  its  condemnation  of  innocent 
pleasure  tends  to  make  men  confound 
vice  and  pleasure.  I  heartily  abhor  the 
man  who  practices  vice  because  he  re- 
gards it  as  the  only  kind  of  enjoyment. 
I  do  not  abhor  quite  as  much,  but  I  at 
least  as  much  despise,  the  clergyman 
who  makes  ready  the  path  for  such  a 
man  by  condemning  indiscriminately 
innocent  enjoyment  and  vice.  It  is  not 
only  harmless,  but  it  is  eminently  de- 
sirable, that  young  people  should  have 
a  good  time. 

What  we  wish  for  ourselves,  and  have 
a  right  to  wish  for  ourselves  I  want  to 
see  us  preach  towards  others.  If  you 
persuade  the  average  boy  that  it  is  wick- 
ed to  have  a  good  time,  it  may  have 
either  one  of  two  results :  if  he  is  a  very 

30 


Realisable   Ideals 


sensitive  boy  it  may  prevent  him  from 
ever  having  a  good  time,  in  which  case 
I  will  guarantee  that  he  makes  all  those 
intimately  associated  with  him  have  a 
very  bad  time;  or  else,  you  may  per- 
suade him  that  inasmuch  as  he  thor- 
oughly intends  to  have  a  good  time,  and 
as  a  good  time  is  wicked — why,  in  for 
a  lamb,  in  for  a  sheep,  and  he  will  be 
wicked  to  some  purpose.  I  ask  here 
again  that  not  only  every  clergyman 
but  every  teacher  of  morals — and  that 
ought  to  include  every  father  who  is 
worth  being  called  father — endeavor  to 
help  the  boy  in  getting  a  good  time;  and 
then  hold  him  to  a  rigid  accountability 
if  he  turns  that  good  time  into  a  bad 
time. 

This  illustrates  just  what  I  mean  by 
a  realizable  ideal.  Don't  preach  the  im- 
possible. Don't  preach  what  makes 

31 


Realizable   Ideals 


your  hearers  think  you  are  insincere. 
But  have  ideals  and  insist  on  their  real- 
ization. If  this  nation  has  not  the  right 
kind  of  ideal  in  every  walk  of  life,  if  we 
have  not  in  our  souls  the  capacity  for 
idealism,  the  power  to  strive  after  ideals, 
then  we  are  gone.  No  nation  ever 
amounted  to  anything  if  it  did  not  have 
within  its  soul  the  power  of  fealty  to  a 
lofty  ideal.  For  that  very  reason  it  is 
our  duty  to  avoid  preaching  false  ideals, 
and  with  almost  equal  scrupulousness 
to  avoid  preaching,  as  desirable,  ideals 
which  cannot  be  measurably  attained. 

I  am  to  deliver  three  more  lectures, 
and  I  wish  in  these  lectures  to  speak  of 
applied  ethics,  of  realizable  ideals;  in 
the  first  place  in  the  family,  because  that 
is  the  foundation  of  everything;  in  the 
next  place  in  public  life — which  means 
in  the  collective  life  of  all  of  us,  in  the 

32 


Realizable   Ideals 


life  lived  on  behalf  of  all  of  us;  and  fin- 
ally as  regards  the  expression  of  public 
opinion,  as  regards  the  instruments  that 
should  do  most  to  shape  public  opinion 
— the  press,  the  magazines.  In  each  of 
those  three  lectures  I  shall  endeavor  to 
show  you  why  I  believe  we  should 
change  certain  of  the  ideals  we  now 
have,  and  why  I  believe  we  should  in 
every  way,  and,  above  all,  by  the  force 
of  public  opinion,  insist  that  the  realiza- 
ble ideal  be  actually  realized  in  practice. 


33 


THE    HOME    AND    THE    CHILD 

If  this  were  the  first  of  these  lectures 
I  would  feel  like  apologizing  for  having 
brought  you  here  under  false  pretenses; 
but  you  came  here  with  your  eyes  open 
now  and  I  haven't  any  sympathy  for 
you! 

I  spoke  yesterday  of  applied  ethics, 
of  realizable  ideals.  Before  I  begin  my 
regular  theme  of  today  I  want  to  say  a 
word  as  to  my  utterances  yesterday.  I 
intend  to  try  to  avoid  the  position  in 
which  a  former  fellow-townsman  of 
mine,  a  Mr.  Richard  Grant  White,  who 
was  a  great  Shakespearian  scholar  got 
himself.  It  was  once  announced  that  he 
was  to  deliver  twelve  lectures  on  Shakes- 
peare; in  his  first  lecture  he  outlined 
what  he  intended  to  say  in  the  other 
eleven;  and  then  he  spent  the  other  elev- 
en in  answering  the  attacks  on  the  first. 

34 


The   H  o  me    and    the    Child 

I  intend  to  try  to  avoid  getting  into  a 
similar  predicament,  but  I  must  make 
one  explanation. 

Two  or  three  remarks  that  were  made 
to  me  after  the  close  of  the  lecture  yes- 
terday suggested  to  me  that  I  ought 
perhaps  to  have  laid  emphasis  on  a  point 
which  seemed  to  me  so  obvious  that  I 
did  not  emphasize  it.  Two  or  three  gen- 
tlemen spoke  to  me  in  a  way  that  indi- 
cated that  they  thought  that  in  advo- 
cating realizable  ideals  I  had  somehow 
seemed  to  advocate  low  ideals.  I  do 
not  believe  that  to  most  of  you  I  con- 
veyed any  such  impression,  but  if  I  did  I 
of  course  wish  to  correct  it.  I  should  be 
ashamed  of  myself  unless  I  believed  in 
high  ideals.  I  do  not  think  that  an  ideal 
is  really  a  high  ideal  unless  it  is  one  that 
is  at  least  partially  realizable.  My 
preaching  is  not  against  high  ideals  but 

35 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

against  wrong  ideals.  I  remember  in  a 
little  story  by  Miss  Mary  E.  Wilkins 
when  she  makes  one  of  her  characters 
say  anent  the  leading  village  worthy 
who  claimed  to  be  much  better  than 
anyone  else,  "I  think  there  are  some  peo- 
ple who  aren't  so  far  ahead  of  us  as  they 
are  to  one  side  of  us;  sometimes  it  is 
latitude  and  sometimes  it  is  longitude 
that  separates  reformers."  I  would  be 
sorry  indeed  to  have  any  word  of  mine 
understood  as  implying  any  willingness 
to  lower  our  ideals.  All  I  want  is  to 
have  the  people  that  preach  them  sure 
that  they  are  really  high  ideals.  No 
ideal  can  be  right  for  this  world  if  it  is 
not  fitted  to  be  used  in  this  world.  It 
cannot  be  right  to  preach  to  men  and 
women  a  standard  of  conduct  up  to 
which  you  do  not  expect  them  to  live. 
My  plea  is  only  that  those  who  preach 

36 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

shall  strive  to  preach  a  doctrine  up  to 
which  it  is  possible  to  live,  and  that 
those  who  listen  shall  not  listen  merely 
to  gratify  their  esthetic  sensibilities,  but 
shall  listen  with  the  serious  purpose  of 
applying  and  of  acting  upon  the  princi- 
ples laid  down  to  them.  Perhaps  in 
what  I  had  to  say  yesterday  I  ought  to 
have  guarded  myself  against  the  possi- 
bility of  anyone's  misconstruing  my  lan- 
guage. I  hope  I  have  so  guarded  my- 
self in  what  I  have  said  today. 

The  first  place  where  I  desire  to  see 
any  man  or  woman  realize  his  or  her 
ideals  is  in  connection  with  those  most 
intimately  thrown  with  him  or  her.  The 
very  first  place  in  which  it  is  necessary 
that  ideals  should  be  realized  is  in  the 
man's  own  home.  It  is  so  elementary 
that  it  seems  hardly  necessary  to  say 
that  everything  else  in  our  civilization 

37 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

rests  upon  the  home;  that  all  public 
achievement  rests  upon  private  charac- 
ter; that  the  state  cannot  go  on  onward 
and  upward,  that  the  nation  cannot 
make  progress,  unless  the  average  indi- 
vidual is  of  the  right  type,  unless  the 
average  American  is  a  pretty  decent 
fellow  and  unless  his  wife  is  a  still  better 
fellow.  It  will  not  be  possible  otherwise 
for  the  nation  permanently  to  rise. 

The  first  essential  toward  the  achieve- 
ment of  good  citizenship  is,  of  course, 
the  building  up  the  kind  of  character 
which  will  make  the  man  a  good  hus- 
band, a  good  father,  a  good  son;  which 
will  make  the  woman  a  good  daughter 
when  she  is  young,  a  good  wife  and 
mother  as  she  grows  older.  Absolutely 
nothing  is  gained  by  filling  a  man  with 
vague  aspirations  for  the  betterment  of 
his  kind  if  you  have  not  filled  him  first 

38 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

of  all  with  the  desire  to  do  decently  by 
those  members  of  mankind  with  whom 
he  passes  most  of  his  life. 

We  all  of  us  know  the  type  of  man, 
frequently  found  at  cross-road  groceries, 
who  in  his  abundant  leisure  is  able  to 
explain  precisely  how  humanity  should 
be  benefited  and  the  nation  run,  mean- 
while he  himself  exists  at  all  only  be- 
cause his  wife  takes  in  washing.  We 
also  know  the  man  who  in  public  life  is 
filled  with  the  loftiest  aspirations;  but 
whose  family  unite  in  breathing  a  sigh 
of  relief  whenever  he  is  absent  from  the 
house. 

Of  course  there  is  now  and  then  a  man 
who  in  some  given  crisis  plays  the  hero 
although  on  other  occasions  he  plays  the 
brute — there  are  such  cases;  but  it  is  a 
mighty  unsafe  thing  to  proceed  upon 
the  assumption  that  because  a  man  is 

39 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

ordinarily  a  brute  he  will  therefore  be 
a  hero  in  a  crisis.  Disregarding  the  ex- 
ceptions, and  speaking  normally,  no 
man  can  be  of  any  service  to  the  state, 
no  man  can  amount  to  anything  from 
the  standpoint  of  usefulness  to  the  com- 
munity at  large,  unless  first  and  fore- 
most he  is  a  decent  man  in  the  close  rela- 
tions of  life.  No  community  can  afford 
to  think  for  one  moment  that  great  pub- 
lic service,  that  great  material  achieve- 
ment, that  ability  shown  in  no  matter 
how  many  different  directions,  will 
atone  for  the  lack  of  a  sound  family  life. 
Multiplication  of  divorces  means  that 
there  is  something  rotten  in  the  com- 
munity, that  there  is  some  principle  of 
evil  at  work  which  must  be  counteracted 
and  overcome  or  widespread  disaster 
will  follow.  In  the  same  way,  if  the  man 
preaches  and  practices  a  different  code 

40 


The   Home   and   the    Child 

of  morality  for  himself  than  that  which 
he  demands  that  his  wife  shall  practice, 
then  no  profession  on  his  part  of  devo- 
tion to  civic  ideals  will  in  the  least  avail 
to  alter  the  fact  that  he  is  fundamentally 
a  bad  citizen.  I  do  not  believe  in  weak- 
ness; I  believe  in  a  man's  being  a  man; 
and  for  that  very  reason  I  abhor  the 
creature  who  uses  the  expression  that  "a 
man  must  be  a  man"  in  order  to  excuse 
his  being  a  vile  and  vicious  man. 

I  recollect  saying  to  a  young  friend 
who  was  about  to  enter  college,  "My 
friend,  I  know  that  you  feel  that  you 
ought  to  be  a  good  man;  now,  be  willing 
to  fight  for  your  principles  whenever  it 
is  necessary;  if  you're  willing  enough  to 
fight  nobody  will  complain  about  your 
being  too  virtuous." 

If  you  accept  only  the  weak  man  who 
cannot  hold  his  own  as  the  type  of  vir- 

41 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

tuous  man,  you  will  inevitably  create  an 
atmosphere  among  ordinary,  vigorous 
young  men  in  which  they  will  translate 
their  contempt  of  weakness  into  con- 
tempt of  virtue.  My  plea  is  that  the 
virtuous  man,  the  decent  man,  shall  be 
a  strong  man,  able  to  hold  his  own  in 
any  way,  just  because  I  wish  him  to  be 
an  agent  in  eradicating  the  misconcep- 
tion that  being  decent  somehow  means 
being  weak;  I  want  this  to  apply  to  every 
form  of  decency,  public  as  well  as  pri- 
vate. 

The  worst  development  that  we  could 
see  in  civic  life  in  this  country  would 
be  a  division  of  citizens  into  two  camps, 
one  camp  containing  nice,  well-behaved, 
well-meaning  little  men,  with  receding 
chins  and  small  feet,  men  who  mean  well 
and  who  if  they  are  insulted  feel  shocked 
and  want  to  go  home;  and  the  other 

42 


The   Home   and   the    Child 

camp  containing  robust  and  efficient 
creatures  who  do  not  mean  well  at  all. 
I  wish  to  see  our  side — the  side  of  de- 
cency— include  men  who  have  not  the 
slightest  fear  of  the  people  on  the  other 
side.  I  wish  to  see  the  decent  man  in 
any  relation  of  life,  including  politics, 
when  hustled  by  the  man  who  is  not 
decent,  able  so  to  hold  his  own  that  the 
other  gentleman  shall  feel  no  desire  to 
hustle  him  again.  My  plea  is  for  the 
virtue  that  shall  be  strong  and  that  shall 
also  have  a  good  time.  You  recollect 
that  Wesley  said  he  wasn't  going  to 
leave  all  the  good  times  to  the  Devil.  In 
the  same  way  we  must  not  leave 
strength  and  efficiency  to  the  Devil's 
agents.  The  decent  man  must  realize 
that  it  is  his  duty  to  be  strong  just  as 
much  as  to  be  decent.  There  are  a  good 
many  types  of  men  for  whom  I  do  not 

43 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

care;  and  among  those  types  I  would 
put  in  prominent  place  the  timid  good 
man — the  good  man  who  means  well 
but  is  afraid.  I  wish  to  see  it  inculcated 
from  the  pulpit  by  every  ethical  teacher, 
and  in  the  home,  that  just  to  be  decent 
is  not  enough;  that  in  addition  to  being 
a  decent  man  it  is  the  duty  of  the  man 
to  be  a  strong  man.  And  also  this ;  to  let 
the  fact  that  he  is  a  decent  man  dawn 
on  his  neighbors  by  itself,  and  without 
his  announcing  it  or  emphasizing  it. 

With  both  men  and  women  the  prime 
necessity  to  remember  is  that  the  simple 
duties  are  the  most  important.  I  be- 
lieve that  they  also  mark  the  way  by 
which,  and  by  which  alone,  it  is  possible 
to  realize  the  truest  and  highest  happi- 
ness. I  have  known  a  good  many  miser- 
able people  in  my  life,  and  infinitely  the 
most  miserable  among  them  have  been 

44 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

those  who  have  deliberately  and  with 
set  purpose  devoted  their  lives  to  the 
pursuit  of  what  they  call  pleasure.  A 
young  girl,  a  young  man,  can  be  happy 
for  a  few  years  and  to  a  certain  degree, 
in  following  a  life  from  which  every  ves- 
tige of  serious  effort  and  of  attempt  to 
fulfill  duty  has  been  removed;  but  they 
can  thus  be  happy  only  at  the  cost  of 
laying  up  for  themselves  an  infinite 
store  of  misery  in  the  future.  In  this 
audience  there  are  many  who  fought  in 
the  great  Civil  War.  The  memories 
that  those  men  prize  are  not  the  mem- 
ories of  the  days  of  ease,  of  the  days 
when  life  was  pleasant  for  them;  the 
memories  that  they  prize,  and  that  they 
wish  to  hand  down  as  heritages  of  honor 
to  their  children,  are  the  memories  of 
the  days  of  toil  and  effort,  of  the  days 
of  the  march  and  the  battle,  the  weary 

45 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

months  in  camp,  the  time  when  in  the 
full  flush  of  their  vigorous  young  man- 
hood they  gladly  risked  everything — 
life  itself — for  the  great  prize  of  death 
in  battle  for  the  right. 

It  is  not  given  to  every  generation — 
fortunately  it  is  given  to  only  an  occa- 
sional generation — to  spend  itself  for  so 
great  a  goal;  but  we  can  all  render,  not 
as  distinguished,  but  as  essential,  a  serv- 
ice in  ordinary  life,  if  only  we  will  face 
the  ordinary  humdrum  every-day  duties 
in  the  spirit  in  which  the  soldiers  of  the 
Civil  War  faced  their  great  and  excep- 
tional task.  But  this  we  can  only  do  if 
we  put  duty  before  pleasure,  and  make 
of  it  our  highest  happiness. 

As  I  said  to  you  yesterday,  I  do  not 
intend  to  preach  anything  that  I  do  not 
think  can  be  practiced.  I  call  your  at- 
tention to  the  fact  that  I  have  not  said 

46 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

that  you  shall  put  duty  in  the  place  of 
pleasure;  I  have  merely  asked  you  to 
put  it  before  pleasure.  Pleasure  has  its 
place.  I  wish  you  to  have  a  good  time, 
I  wish  you  to  enjoy  yourselves.  But  I 
wish  you  to  remember  that  merely  hav- 
ing a  good  time  will  turn  to  bitter  dust  in 
your  mouth,  to  Dead  Sea  fruit  in  your 
mouth,  if  you  devote  your  whole  atten- 
tion only  to  the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  and 
especially  to  the  pursuit  of  vapid  pleas- 
ure. Pleasure  interspersed  as  an  occa- 
sional needed  relief  in  doing  your  life 
work  as  duty  demands  that  you  do  it — 
such  pleasure  is  worth  having.  But 
pleasure  pursued  as  a  serious  business 
represents  about  as  melancholy  an  occu- 
pation as  any  that  I  know  of  anywhere. 
Of  course,  if  you  have  the  pure  Bridge 
Club  type  of  mind  I  can't  expect  to 
appeal  to  you.  If  unlimited  Bridge, 

47 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

continued  through  that  section  of  eter- 
nity that  you  enjoy  on  this  earth, 
represents  your  ideal,  then  nothing 
that  I  can  say  will  in  any  way  shake 
or  alter  it — which  will  be,  not  my 
fault,  but  yours.  If,  however,  you  have 
in  you  the  desire  for  higher  things,  then 
I  believe  that  it  is  possible  to  make  you 
realize  that  in  the  long  run  your  greatest 
enjoyment  will  come  from  the  perform- 
ance of  duty.  It  is  very  important  that 
we  should  consider  our  rights;  but  it  is 
all-important  that  we  should  consider 
our  duties. 

A  little  while  ago  I  was  handed  a  let- 
ter from  the  Equal  Suffrage  Association 
asking  me  to  speak  on  behalf  of  Woman 
Suffrage.  I  have  always  told  my  friends 
that  it  seemed  to  me  that  no  man  was 
worth  his  salt  who  did  not  think  very 
deeply  of  woman's  rights;  and  that  no 

48 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

woman  was  worth  her  salt  who  did  not 
think  more  of  her  duties  than  of  her 
rights.  Now,  personally  I  am  rather 
tepidly  in  favor  of  woman's  suffrage. 
When  the  opportunity  came  I  have  al- 
ways supported  it.  But  I  have  studied 
the  condition  of  women  in  those  states 
where  they  have  the  suffrage  and  in  the 
adjacent  states  where  they  do  not  have 
it;  and,  after  such  study  I  have  never 
been  able  to  take  as  great  interest  in  the 
question  as  in  many  other  questions  be- 
cause it  has  always  seemed  to  me  so 
infinitely  less  important  than  so  many 
other  questions  affecting  women.  I  do 
not  think  that  the  harm  that  its  oppo- 
nents fear  will  come  from  it,  but  I  do 
not  think  that  more  than  a  fraction  of 
the  good  that  its  advocates  anticipate 
will  come  from  it.  In  consequence,  while 
I  favor  it  yet,  as  I  said,  I  favor  it  tepidly, 

49 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

because  I  am  infinitely  more  interested 
in  other  things.  I  do  not  believe  that 
the  question  of  woman's  voting  is  a 
thousandth  or  a  millionth  part  as  im- 
portant as  the  question  of  keeping,  and 
where  necessary  reviving,  among  the 
women  of  this  country,  the  realization 
that  their  great  work  must  be  done  in 
the  home,  that  the  ideal  woman  of  the 
future,  just  like  the  ideal  woman  of  the 
past,  must  be  the  good  wife,  the  good 
mother,  the  mother  who  is  able  to  bear, 
and  to  rear,  a  number  of  healthy  chil- 
dren. Now,  I  notice  that  a  good  many 
men  applauded  that  statement.  I  wish 
to  say  to  those  men  in  their  turn  that 
there  is  no  human  being  with  whom  I 
have  less  sympathy  than  the  man  who  is 
always  loudly  in  favor  of  woman  doing 
her  duty  while  he  falls  short  in  the  per- 
formance of  his  own.  He  in  his  turn  is 

SO 


The   Home   and   the    Child 

not  fit  to  exercise  the  suffrage  if  he  is 
not  a  good  man  in  his  own  home.  If  he 
does  not  make  it  the  first  duty  of  his  life 
to  be  an  efficient  home-maker,  a  good 
and  loving  husband,  a  wise  and  loving 
father,  he  is  a  mighty  poor  citizen.  And 
let  him  be  exceedingly  careful  that  he 
occupies  the  proper  relation  towards  his 
family,  and  does  his  duty  to  the  state; 
before  he  tries  to  talk  to  the  woman 
about  keeping  her  proper  position.  Let 
him  do  his  duty  first  before  troubling 
himself  as  to  how  she  does  hers. 

I  wish  to  speak  especially  about  the 
relation  of  the  home  and  the  child. 
There  is  a  natural — and  I  cannot  help 
thinking  a  regrettable — tendency  to 
treat  with  a  certain  levity  what  ought 
to  be  the  great  fundamental  truth  under- 
lying every  system  of  morals  taught  in 
this  country.  I  do  not  wish  to  see  this 

51 


The   Home    and    the    Child 

country  a  country  of  selfish  prosperity, 
where  those  who  enjoy  the  material 
prosperity  think  only  of  the  selfish  grat- 
ification of  their  own  desires,  and  are 
content  to  import  from  abroad  not  only 
their  art,  not  only  their  literature,  but 
even  their  babies.  Look  at  the  census 
returns  published  in  1910,  and  you  will 
see  that  this  country  is  beginning  to 
travel  the  path  that  France  has  long 
been  traveling.  Two-thirds  of  our  in- 
crease now  comes  from  the  immigrants 
and  not  from  the  babies  born  here,  not 
from  young  Americans  who  are  to  per- 
petuate the  blood  and  traditions  of  the 
old  stock.  It  surely  ought  to  be  so  ob- 
vious as  to  be  unnecessary  to  point  out 
that  all  thought  of  the  next  generation, 
all  thought  of  its  vocational,  artistic  or 
ethical  training  is  wasted  thought  if 
there  is  not  to  be  a  next  generation  to 

52 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

train.  The  first  duty  of  any  nation  that 
is  worth  considering  at  all  is  to  perpetu- 
ate its  own  life,  its  own  blood.  That 
duty  will  not  be  performed  unless  we 
have  not  merely  a  high  but  a  sober  ideal 
of  duty  and  devotion  in  family  life,  un- 
less our  men  and  women  realize  what 
true  happiness  is,  realize  and  act  on  the 
belief  that  no  other  form  of  pleasure,  no 
other  form  of  enjoyment,  in  any  way 
takes  the  place  of  that  highest  of  all 
pleasures  which  comes  only  in  the  home, 
which  comes  from  the  love  of  the  one 
man  and  the  one  woman  for  each  other, 
and  for  their  children.  Nothing  else 
takes  the  place  or  can  take  the  place  of 
family  life,  and  family  life  cannot  be 
really  happy  unless  it  is  based  on  duty, 
based  on  recognition  of  the  great  under- 
lying laws  of  religion  and  morality, 
of  the  great  underlying  laws  of  civili- 

53 


The   Home   and   the    Child 

zation,  the  laws  which  if  broken  mean 
the  dissolution  of  civilization.  Unless 
the  average  man  and  woman  are  mar- 
ried and  have  healthy  children  then  my 
coming  before  this  audience  is  a  waste 
of  time  and  it  is  a  waste  of  time 
for  you  in  your  turn  to  come  here 
and  listen  to  me.  If  you  do  not 
believe  in  your  own  stock  enough  to 
wish  to  see  the  stock  kept  up  then  you 
are  not  good  Americans,  you  are  not 
patriots ;  and  if  you  do  not  believe  in  this, 
then  I  for  one  shall  not  mourn  your  ex- 
tinction, and  in  such  event  I  shall  wel- 
come the  advent  of  a  new  race  that  will 
take  your  place,  because  you  will  have 
shown  that  you  are  not  fit  to  cumber  the 
ground. 

This  is  the  most  essential  and  the  least 
pleasant  truth  that  I  have  to  tell  you.  I 
I  can't  expect  you  to  applaud  it.  But  I 

54 


The   Home   and   the    Child 

want  you  to  think  over  it;  and  I  don't 
care  a  rap  what  you  think  of  me  for  tell- 
it  to  you,  if  only  you  will  think  seriously 
of  the  truth  itself.  In  the  long  run  no 
man  or  woman  can  really  be  happy  un- 
less he  or  she  is  doing  service.  Happi- 
ness springing  exclusively  from  some 
other  cause  crumbles  in  your  hands, 
amounts  to  nothing;  and  in  no  other 
way  can  service  as  good  be  rendered  as 
by  the  right  type  of  mother  and  father 
— and  I  have  put  them  in  their  order  of 
precedence,  the  mother  first,  the  father 
next. 

Speaking  here  in  a  great  educational 
institution  I  wish  to  extend  my  pro- 
found sympathy  to  the  teachers  and  in- 
structors who  are  continually  brought 
into  contact  with  what  I  may  call  the 
cuckoo  style  of  parent — the  parent  who 
believes  that  when  he  can  once  turn  his 

55 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

child  into  school  he  shifts  all  responsi- 
bility from  his  own  shoulders  for  the 
child's  education,  the  parent  who  be- 
lieves that  he  can  buy  for  a  certain  sum 
— which  he  usually  denounces  as  excess- 
ive— a  deputy  parent  to  do  his  work  for 
him.  There  is  no  profession  in  this 
country  quite  as  important  as  the  profes- 
sion of  teacher,  ranging  from  the  College 
President  right  down  to  the  lowest  paid 
teacher  in  any  one  of  our  smallest  coun- 
try public  schools.  There  is  no  other 
profession  so  important.  But  not  the 
best  teacher  can  wholly  supply  the  want 
of  what  ought  to  be  done  in  the  home  by 
the  father  and  the  mother.  And  you 
men  here,  I  wish  you  to  remember  that 
I  put  the  father  in  with  the  mother.  I 
know  perfectly  well  that  he  cannot  fulfill 
quite  as  useful  a  function  in  the  home; 
but  he  has  his  place!  He  has  no  right 

56 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

to  try  to  shift  the  burden  wholly  upon 
the  woman's  shoulders  and  then  wonder 
why  the  children  are  not  better  brought 
up.  We  continually  speak — and  it  is 
perfectly  proper  that  we  should — of  the 
enormous  importance  of  the  woman's 
work  in  the  home.  It  is  more  important 
than  the  man's.  She  does  play  a  greater 
part.  But  the  man  is  not  to  be  excused 
if  he  fails  to  recognize  that  his  work  in 
the  home,  in  helping  bring  up,  as  well  as 
provide  for,  the  children,  is  also  one  of 
his  primary  functions. 

Just  because  she  is  more  important  in 
the  home  than  the  father  I  wish  to  speak 
especially  to  the  women  on  one  point  in 
connection  with  bringing  up  children. 
One  of  the  things  that  makes  one  sad  in 
certain  families  is  to  see  the  harm  done 
by  the  loving  parent  who  is  foolish.  I 
trust  that  I  need  not  say  that  I  abhor 

57 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

and  condemn  the  father  and  the  mother 
who  do  not  give  ample  and  manifest  love 
to  the  children.  It  is  a  dreadful  thing 
to  have  a  child  brought  up  in  a  loveless 
home;  it  is  a  dreadful  thing  to  have  the 
children  who  are  brought  into  the  world 
deprived  of  the  love  and  the  devotion 
which  is  their  due.  But  great  though 
the  harm  is  that  is  done  by  the  hard, 
narrow,  unsympathetic  parent,  it  is 
hardly  greater  than  the  harm  done  by 
the  well-meaning  parent — and  I  regret 
to  say  more  often  by  the  woman  than 
the  man — the  well-meaning  parent  who 
permits  tenderness  of  heart  to  extend 
until  it  becomes  softness  of  head.  Too 
often,  among  hard-working  friends  of 
mine  I  have  known  a  woman  say,  "I've 
had  to  work  hard  all  my  life  and  my 
daughter  shall  be  brought  up  as  a  lady" ; 
meaning — poor  soul — that  the  daughter 

58 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

shall  be  brought  up  to  be  utterly  worth- 
less to  herself  and  to  everyone  else.  I 
have  often  seen  a  good  woman — at  least 
a  woman  who  was  good  in  purpose — 
allow  her  children  to  become  utterly  sel- 
fish, and  really  elaborately  trained  for 
avoiding  the  performance  of  duty,  under 
the  mistaken  impression  that  she  was 
being  kind  and  loving  to  them.  The 
worst  wrong  that  can  be  committed  by 
you  mothers  and  fathers  to  your  chil- 
dren is  to  train  them  in  such  fashion 
that  they  have  no  recognition  of  duty  to 
themselves  or  to  others.  Your  children 
had  better  have  been  taken  away  from 
you  and  adopted  somewhere  else  than 
brought  up  by  you  if  you  are  guilty  of 
the  culpable  weakness  of  gratifying  your 
own  feeling  of  weak,  ease-loving  affec- 
tion by  failing  to  make  them  behave 
from  the  beginning  as  they  ought  to  be- 
have. 

59 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

I  am  speaking  of  what  I  have  seen  in 
humble  households.  I  have  seen  it  in 
aggravated  degree  in  bigger  households ; 
but,  just  as  I  told  you  yesterday,  I  am 
not  concerned  very  much  with  the  multi- 
millionaire excepting  as  we  are  foolish 
enough  to  allow  ourselves  to  be  hurt  by 
anything  that  is  wrong  in  his  example. 
I  meet  just  as  large  a  proportion  of  good 
people  among  multi-millionaires  as 
among  others;  but  anything  merely  af- 
fecting them  is  a  small  question.  I  am 
not  dealing  with  them.  If  they  all  went 
wrong,  and  the  rest  of  the  American 
people  went  right,  the  nation  would  still 
be  all  right. 

The  man  in  whom  I  am  primarily  inter- 
ested, the  woman  in  whom  I  am  most 
interested,  is  the  average  man  and  the 
average  woman,  the  American  whom  we 
see  about  us  running  the  trolley-cars, 

60 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

running  the  steam-cars,  running  every 
small  business,  taking  care  of  the  small 
houses,  doing  all  the  ordinary  things 
around  about  us.  It  is  for  and  to  them 
that  I  am  speaking. 

If  the  mother  teaches  the  girl  that 
when  she  comes  home  she  is  to  sit  in  the 
front  parlor  at  ease  and  let  the  mother 
work  in  the  kitchen  and  run  up  and 
down  stairs  until  at  the  end  of  the  day 
she  is  utterly  worn  out,  she  not  only 
wrongs  herself — that  I  am  not  con- 
cerned about,  for  she  is  too  foolish  to 
have  me  care  very  much  about  her — but, 
what  I  am  concerned  about,  she  inflicts 
a  dreadful  wrong  on  the  daughter  and 
upon  all  with  whom  the  daughter  is 
afterwards  to  be  brought  into  contact. 
If  the  girl  trained  in  such  a  way  is  a 
fundamentally  good  girl  she  will  finally 
unlearn  the  lesson  she  was  taught  at 

61 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

home;  but  it  will  cost  her  years  of  effort 
to  unlearn  the  lesson;  and  if  she  is  of 
weak  character  she  will  have  been  per- 
manently spoiled. 

And  in  just  the  same  way  with  the 
father — and  here  I  am  going  to  say  a 
word  especially  to  the  father  who  is  pret- 
ty well  off  in  this  world's  goods.  If  the 
father  brings  up  the  boy  in  such  fashion 
that  he  cannot  do  anything  except  spend 
money  in  vacuous  fashion  he  has  not 
helped  the  boy,  he  has  hurt  him.  It 
would  have  been  better  for  the  boy  that 
the  father  had  never  earned  money  at 
all  than  to  have  earned  money  if  his 
training  is  to  be  in  such  fashion.  Of 
course,  you  fathers,  it  is  a  great  error  to 
think  that  it  is  necessary  to  show  need-- 
less harshness  to  your  sons.  I  have  no 
patience  with  that  type  of  twisted  Pur- 
itanism which  forbids  the  father  to  show 

62 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

love  and  affection  and  consideration  for 
his  son.  You  do  not  make  the  boy 
hardier  or  better  by  making  him  miser- 
able; you  do  not  tend  to  make  him  a 
good  citizen  by  giving  him  a  feeling  of 
sore  dislike  for  his  parent.  Make  him 
your  companion,  make  him  your  friend; 
do  all  you  can  for  him;  and  then  make 
him  understand  that  in  his  turn  he  must 
do  all  he  can  for  you  and  for  the  rest  of 
the  family.  Make  it  a  reciprocal  bond 
between  you.  But  never  whether  from 
carelessness  or  folly  let  him  grow  up 
thinking  that  it  is  proper  for  him  to 
lead  a  useless  or  idle  life  or  one  of  mere 
pleasure.  We  have  room  in  this  country 
for  a  busy  leisure  class  but  we  have  no 
room  for  an  idle  class,  I  dont  care  at 
which  end  of  the  social  scale,  whether 
of  a  hobo  or  a  multi-millionaire. 

And  one  more  word  to  the  mother.     I 

63 


The   Home    and    the    Child 

have  spoken  of  the  mother's  training  of 
the  daughter.  Perhaps  it  is  even  worse 
if  the  mother  permits  the  son  to  grow 
up  selfish  and  without  regard  for  the 
feeling  of  others.  I  remember  a  good 
many  years  ago  reading  a  little  story 
that  impressed  me  much.  It  described 
a  tired,  rather  wornout  mother  getting 
into  a  railroad  train  with  her  boy.  The 
mother  sat  by  the  window  in  the  seat; 
the  minute  the  little  boy  discovered  that 
he  was  not  by  the  window  he  began 
"mother,  I  want  to  sit  by  the  window"; 
she  replied  "mother  is  tired";  then  he, 
"mother,  I  want  to  sit  by  the  window"; 
she  answered  "now,  Johnnie,  you 
wouldn't  ask  to  sit  by  the  window  when 
poor  mother  is  so  tired";  he,  pouting 
and  sullen  "I  want  to  sit  by  the  win- 
dow"; she,  patiently  "Johnnie,  I  want 
to  look  out  of  the  window,  I  am  very 

64 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

tired,  I  want  to  rest";  he,  louder  and 
more  angry,  "I  want  to  sit  by  the 
window";  whereupon  at  last  the  mother 
let  him  sit  by  the  window!  The  author 
of  the  story  went  on  to  say  that  some- 
time in  the  future  a  sad  little  wife  would 
wonder  "why  men  were  so  inconsider- 
ate"; and  that  the  blame  would  rest 
really  as  much  with  Johnnie's  unwise 
mother  as  with  himself.  Of  course, 
what  the  Johnnie  of  that  type  needs  is 
a  firm  parental  hand.  Let  him  have 
discipline  in  as  ample  a  measure  as  love. 
I  remember  a  most  excellent  back- 
woods mother  whom  I  once  knew  who, 
having  disciplined  a  boy  who  sadly 
needed  it,  was  addressed  by  a  rather 
sentimental  lady  of  my  acquaintance  as 
follows:  "Oh,  my  dear  Mrs.  So  and  So, 
I  am  sure  it  hurt  you  worse  than  it  did 
him"!  To  which  my  backwoods  friend 

65 


The   Home    and   the    Child 

responded,  "indeed  it  did  not,  he  had 
been  very  bad;  and  I  thoroughly  en- 
joyed it"! 

So  my  plea  today  is  for  that  form  of 
applied  ethics  which  lies  at  the  base  of 
every  kind  of  good  citizenship.  We 
cannot  have  good  citizenship  in  the 
present  unless  the  average  man  and  the 
average  woman  do  their  duty  in  their 
homes;  we  cannot  have  good  citizen- 
ship in  the  future  unless  in  the  average 
home  the  average  boy  and  girl  are  so 
brought  up  that  in  the  future  they  will 
be  American  men  and  women  of  the 
right  type,  able  and  anxious  to  meet  all 
the  exacting  demands  that  American 
citizenship  now  makes,  and  that  it  will 
make  in  ever  increasing  degree  upon  our 
people  as  the  generations  pass. 


66 


THE  BIBLE  AND  THE  LIFE  OF 
THE  PEOPLE 

I  have  come  here  to-day,  in  the  course 
of  a  series  of  lectures  upon  applied 
ethics,  upon  realizable  ideals,  to  speak 
of  the  book  to  which  our  people  owe 
infinitely  the  greater  part  of  their  store 
of  ethics,  infinitely  the  greater  part  of 
their  knowledge  of  how  to  apply  that 
store  to  the  needs  of  our  every-day  life. 

There  have  been  many  collections  of 
the  sacred  books,  the  sacred  writings  of 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments — many 
collections  of  note.  Upon  an  occasion 
such  as  this  we  who  think  most  of  all 
of  the  King  James  version  of  the  Bible 
should  be  the  first  to  acknowledge  our 
obligation  to  many  of  the  other  versions, 
especially  to  the  earliest  of  the  great  ver- 
sions, the  Vulgate  of  St.  Jerome,  a  very 
great  version,  a  version  that  played  an 

67 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

incalculable  part  in  the  development  of 
Western  Europe,  because  it  put  the 
Bible  into  the  common  language  of 
Western  Europe,  the  language  known 
to  every  man  who  pretended  to  any  de- 
gree of  learning — Latin — and  therefore 
gave  the  Bible  to  the  peoples  of  the 
West  at  a  time  when  the  old  classic  civil- 
ization of  Greece  and  Rome  had  first 
crumbled  to  rottenness  and  had  then 
been  overwhelmed  by  the  barbarian  sea. 
In  the  wreck  of  the  old  world,  Christian- 
ity was  all  that  the  survivors  had  to 
cling  to;  and  the  Latin  version  of  the 
Bible  put  it  at  their  disposal. 

Other  versions  of  the  Bible  followed 
from  time  to  time,  and  gradually  men 
began  to  put  them  into  the  vernaculars 
of  the  different  countries.  Wyclifs 
Bible  is  one  version  to  which  we  must 
feel  under  deep  obligation.  But  the 

68 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

great  debt  of  the  English-speaking 
peoples  everywhere  is  to  the  translation 
of  the  Bible  that  we  all  know — I  trust 
I  can  say,  all  here  know — in  our  own 
homes,  the  Bible  as  it  was  put  forth  in 
English  three  centuries  ago.  No  other 
book  of  any  kind  ever  written  in  Eng- 
lish— perhaps  no  other  book  ever  writ- 
ten in  any  other  tongue — has  ever  so 
affected  the  whole  life  of  a  people  as  this 
authorized  version  of  the  Scriptures  has 
affected  the  life  of  the  English-speaking 
peoples. 

I  enter  a  most  earnest  plea  that  in  our 
hurried  and  rather  bustling  life  of  to-day 
we  do  not  lose  the  hold  that  our  fore- 
fathers had  on  the  Bible.  I  wish  to  see 
Bible  study  as  much  a  matter  of  course 
in  the  secular  college  as  in  the  seminary. 
No  educated  man  can  afford  to  be  igno- 
rant of  the  Bible;  and  no  uneducated 

69 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

man  can  afford  to  be  ignorant  of  the 
Bible.  Occasional  critics,  taking  sec- 
tions of  the  Old  Testament,  are  able  to 
point  out  that  the  teachings  therein  are 
not  in  accordance  with  our  own  convic- 
tions and  views  of  morality,  and  they 
ignore  the  prime  truth  that  these  deeds 
recorded  in  the  Old  Testament  are  not 
in  accordance  with  our  theories  of 
morality  because  of  the  very  fact  that 
these  theories  are  based  upon  the  New 
Testament,  because  the  New  Testament 
represents  not  only  in  one  sense  the  ful- 
fillment of  the  Old  but  in  another  sense 
the  substitution  of  the  New  Testament 
for  the  Old  in  certain  vital  points  of 
ethics.  If  critics  of  this  kind  would  study 
the  morality  inculcated  by  the  Old  Test- 
ament among  the  chosen  people,  and 
compare  it,  not  with  the  morality  of  to- 
day, not  with  the  morality  created  by 

70 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

the  New  Testament,  but  with  the  moral- 
ity of  the  surrounding  nations  of  anti- 
quity, who  had  no  Bible,  they  would 
appreciate  the  enormous  advances  that 
the  Old  Testament  even  in  its  most 
primitive  form  worked  for  the  Jewish 
people.  The  Old  Testament  did  not 
carry  Israel  as  far  as  the  New  Testa- 
ment has  carried  us;  but  it  advanced 
Israel  far  beyond  the  point  any  neigh- 
boring nation  had  then  reached. 

In  studying  the  writings  of  the  aver- 
age critic  who  has  assailed  the  Bible  the 
most  salient  point  is  usually  his  pecu- 
liar shallowness  in  failing  to  understand, 
not  merely  the  lofty  ethical  teachings  of 
the  Bible  as  we  now  know  it,  but  the 
elemental  fact  that  even  the  most  primi- 
tive ethical  system  taught  in  the  primi- 
tive portions  of  the  Bible,  the  earliest  of 
the  sacred  writings,  marks  a  giant  stride 

71 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

in  moral  advance  when  compared  with 
the  contemporary  ethical  conceptions  of 
the  other  peoples  of  the  day. 

Moreover,  I  appeal  for  a  study  of  the 
Bible  on  many  different  accounts,  even 
aside  from  its  ethical  and  moral  teach- 
ings, even  aside  from  the  fact  that  all 
serious  people,  all  men  who  think  deeply, 
even  among  non-Christians,  have  come 
to  agree  that  the  life  of  Christ,  as  set 
forth  in  the  four  Gospels,  represents 
an  infinitely  higher  and  purer  morality 
than  is  preached  in  any  other  book  of 
the  world.  Aside  from  this,  I  ask  that 
the  Bible  be  studied  for  the  sake  of  the 
breadth  it  must  give  to  every  man  who 
studies  it.  I  cannot  understand  the  men- 
tal attitude  of  those  who  would  put  the 
Bible  to  one  side  as  not  being  a  book  of 
interest  to  grown  men.  What  could  in- 
terest men  who  find  the  Bible  dull?  The 

72 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

Sunday  newspaper?  Think  of  the  differ- 
ence there  must  be  in  the  mental  make- 
up of  the  man  whose  chief  reading  in- 
cludes the  one,  as  compared  with  the 
man  whose  chief  reading  is  represented 
by  the  other — the  vulgarity,  the  shallow- 
ness,  the  inability  to  keep  the  mind 
fixed  on  any  serious  subject,  which  is 
implied  in  the  mind  of  any  man  who  can- 
not read  the  Bible  and  yet  can  take 
pleasure  in  reading  only  literature  of  the 
type  of  the  colored  supplement  of  the 
Sunday  paper.  Now,  I  am  not  speaking 
against  the  colored  supplement  of  any 
paper  in  its  place;  but  as  a  substitute  for 
serious  reading  of  the  great  Book,  it  re- 
presents a  type  of  mind  which  it  is  gross 
flattery  merely  to  call  shallow. 

I  do  not  ask  you  to  accept  the  word 
of  those  who  preach  the  Bible  as  an 
inspired  book;  I  make  my  appeal  not 

73 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

only  to  professing  Christians;  I  make  it 
to  every  man  who  seeks  after  a  high 
and  useful  life,  to  every  man  who  seeks 
the  inspiration  of  religion,  or  who  en- 
deavors to  make  his  life  conform  to  a 
high  ethical  standard;  to  every  man 
who,  be  he  Jew  or  Gentile,  whatever  his 
form  of  religious  belief,  whatever  creed 
he  may  profess,  faces  life  with  the  real 
desire  not  only  to  get  out  of  it  what  is 
best,  but  to  do  his  part  in  everything 
that  tells  for  the  ennobling  and  uplifting 
of  humanity. 

I  am  making  a  plea,  not  only  for  the 
training  of  the  mind,  but  for  the  moral 
and  spiritual  training  of  the  home  and 
the  church,  the  moral  and  spiritual  train- 
ing that  has  always  been  found  in,  and 
has  ever  accompanied,  the  study  of  the 
book  which  in  almost  every  civilized 
tongue,  and  in  many  an  uncivilized,  can 

74 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

be  described  as  "the  Book"  with  the  cer- 
tainty of  having  the  description  under- 
stood by  all  listeners.  A  year  and  a 
quarter  ago  I  was  passing  on  foot 
through  the  native  kingdom  of  Uganda, 
in  Central  Africa.  Uganda  is  the  most 
highly  developed  of  the  pure  Negro 
states  in  Africa.  It  is  the  state  which 
has  given  the  richest  return  for  mission- 
ary labor.  It  now  contains  some  half- 
million  of  Christians,  the  direction  of  the 
government  being  in  the  hands  of  those 
Christians.  I  was  interested  to  find  that 
in  their  victorious  fight  against,  in  the 
first  place,  heathendom,  and,  in  the  next 
place,  Moslemism,  the  native  Christians 
belonging  to  the  several  different  sects, 
both  Catholics  and  Protestants,  had 
had  taken  as  their  symbol  "the  Book," 
sinking  all  minor  differences  among 
themselves,  and  coming  together  on  the 

75 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

common  ground  of  their  common  belief 
in  "the  Book"  that  was  the  most  pre- 
cious gift  the  white  man  had  brought  to 
them. 

It  is  of  that  book,  and  as  testimony  to 
its  incalculable  influence  for  good  from 
the  educational  and  moral  standpoint, 
that  the  great  scientist  Huxley  wrote  in 
the  following  words : 

"Consider  the  great  historical  fact 
that  for  three  centuries  this  book  has 
been  woven  into  the  life  of  all  that  is 
noblest  and  best  in  English  history; 
that  it  has  become  the  national  epic  of 
Britain;  that  it  is  written  in  the  noblest 
and  purest  English  and  abounds  in  ex- 
quisite beauties  of  mere  literary  form; 
and,  finally,  that  it  forbids  the  veriest 
hind,  who  never  left  his  village,  to  be 
ignorant  of  the  existence  of  other  coun- 
tries and  other  civilizations  of  a  great 

76 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

past  stretching  back  to  the  furthest 
limits  of  the  oldest  nations  in  the  world. 
By  the  study  of  what  other  book  could 
children  be  so  much  humanized  and 
made  to  feel  that  each  figure  in  that  vast 
historical  procession  fills,  like  them- 
selves, but  a  momentary  space  in  the  in- 
terval between  the  Eternities?" 

I  ask  your  attention  to  this  when  I 
plead  for  the  training  of  children  in  the 
Bible.  I  am  quoting,  not  a  professed 
Christian,  but  a  scientific  man  whose 
scientific  judgment  is  thus  expressed  as 
to  the  value  of  Biblical  training  for  the 
young. 

And  again  listen  to  what  Huxley  says 
as  to  the  bearing  of  the  Bible  upon  those 
who  study  the  ills  of  our  time  with  the 
hope  of  eventually  remedying  them: 

"The  Bible  has  been  the  Magna 
Charta  of  the  poor  and  of  the  oppressed. 

77 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

Down  to  modern  times  no  State  has  had 
a  constitution  in  which  the  interests  of 
the  people  are  so  largely  taken  into  ac- 
count, in  which  the  duties  so  much  more 
than  the  privileges  of  rulers  are  insisted 
upon,  as  that  drawn  up  for  Israel  in 
Deuteronomy  and  in  Leviticus;  nowhere 
is  the  fundamental  truth  that  the  wel- 
fare of  the  State  in  the  long  run  depends 
upon  the  righteousness  of  the  citizen  so 
strongly  laid  down.  .  .  .  The  Bible  is  the 
most  democratic  book  in  the  world." 

This  is  the  judgment  of  Huxley,  one 
of  the  greatest  scientific  thinkers  of  the 
last  century.  I  ask  you  to  train  children 
in  the  Bible.  Never  commit  the  awful 
error  of  training  the  child  by  making 
him  learn  verses  of  the  Bible  as  a  punish- 
ment. I  remember  once  calling  upon  a 
very  good  woman  and  finding  one  of  her 
small  sons,  with  a  face  of  black  injury, 

78 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

studying  the  Bible,  and  this  very  good 
woman  said  to  me  with  pride,  "Johnny 
has  been  bad,  and  he  is  learning  a  chap- 
ter of  Isaiah  by  heart."  I  could  not 
refrain  from  saying,  "My  dear  madam, 
how  can  you  do  such  a  dreadful  thing 
as  to  make  the  unfortunate  Johnny  as- 
sociate for  the  rest  of  his  life  the  noble 
and  beautiful  poetry  and  prophecy  of 
Isaiah  with  an  excessively  disagreeable 
task?  You  are  committing  a  greater 
wrong  against  him  than  any  he  has  him- 
self committed."  Punish  the  children  in 
any  other  way  than  is  necessary;  but  do 
not  make  them  look  upon  the  Bible  with 
suspicion  and  dislike  as  an  instrument  of 
torture,  so  that  they  feel  that  it  is  a  pain 
to  have  to  read  it,  instead  of,  as  it  ought 
to  be,  a  privilege  and  pleasure  to  read  it. 
In  reading  the  Bible  and  the  beautiful 
Bible  stones  that  have  delighted  child- 

79 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

hood  for  so  many  generations,  my  own 
preference  is  to  read  them  from  the 
Bible  and  not  as  explained  even  in  other- 
wise perfectly  nice  little  books.  Read 
these  majestic  and  simple  stories  with 
whatever  explanation  is  necessary  to 
make  the  child  understand  the  words; 
and  then  the  story  he  will  understand 
without  difficulty. 

Of  course  we  must  not  forget  to  give 
whatever  explanation  is  necessary  to  en- 
able the  child  to  understand  the  words. 
I  think  every  father  and  mother  comes 
to  realize  how  queerly  the  little  brains 
will  accept  new  words  at  times.  I  re- 
member an  incident  of  the  kind  in  con- 
nection with  a  clergyman  to  whose 
church  I  went  when  a  very  small  boy. 
It  was  a  big  Presbyterian  church  in 
Madison  Square,  New  York;  any  New 
Yorker  of  my  age  who  happens  to  be 

80 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

present  here  will  probably  recollect  the 
church.  We  had  a  clergyman  one  of 
the  finest  men  that  I  had  ever  met,  one 
of  the  very,  very  rare  men  to  whom  it 
would  be  no  misuse  of  words  to  describe 
as  saintly.  He  was  very  fond  of  one  of 
his  little  grandsons.  This  little  grand- 
son showed  an  entire  willingness  to 
come  to  church  and  to  Sunday-school 
when  there  were  plenty  of  people  pres- 
ent; but  it  was  discovered  that  he  was 
most  reluctant  to  go  anywhere  near  the 
church  when  there  were  not  people 
there.  As  often  happens  with  a  child 
(every  mother  knows  how  difficult  it 
often  is  to  find  out  just  what  the  little 
mind  is  thinking),  his  parents  could  not 
find  out  for  some  time  what  was  the 
matter  with  the  little  boy  or  what  he 
was  afraid  of  in  the  church.  Finally, 
Dr.  Adams,  the  clergyman,  started  down 

81 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

to  the  church  and  asked  his  little  grand- 
son to  come  with  him.  After  a  little 
hesitation  the  small  boy  said  yes,  if  his 
grandfather  were  coming,  he  would  go. 
They  got  inside  the  church  and  walked 
down  the  aisle,  their  footsteps  echoing 
in  the  empty  church.  The  little  fellow 
trotted  alongside  his  grandfather,  look- 
ing with  half-frightened  eagerness  on 
every  side.  Soon  he  said,  "Grandfather, 
where  is  the  Zeal?"  The  grandfather, 
much  puzzled,  responded,  "Where  is 
what?"  "Where  is  the  Zeal?"  repeated 
the  little  boy.  The  grandfather  said, 
"I  don't  know  what  you  mean;  what  are 
you  talking  of?"  "Why,  grandfather, 
don't  you  know?  'The  zeal  of  thine 
house  hath  eaten  me  up'!"  Now  that 
little  fellow  had  been  rendered  pro- 
foundly uncomfortable  and  very  sus- 
picious of  the  church  because  he  had 

82 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

read  this  statement,  had  accepted  it  in 
literal  fashion,  and  concluded  there  was 
some  kind  of  fearful  beast  dwelling  in 
the  church,  as  to  which  it  behooved  him 
to  be  on  his  guard. 

It  would  be  a  great  misfortune  for  our 
people  if  they  ever  lost  the  Bible  as  one 
of  their  habitual  standards  and  guides  in 
morality.  In  addressing  this  body, 
which  must  contain  representatives  of 
many  different  creeds,  I  ask  you  men 
and  women  to  treat  the  Bible  in  the  only 
way  in  which  it  can  be  treated  if  benefit 
is  to  be  obtained  from  it,  and  that  is,  as 
a  guide  to  conduct.  I  make  no  pretense 
to  speak  to  you  on  dogmatic  theology — 
there  are  probably  scores  of  different 
views  of  dogma  here  represented.  There 
are  scores  of  different  ways  leading  to- 
ward the  same  goal;  but  there  is  one  test 
which  we  have  a  right  to  apply  to  the 

83 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

professors  of  all  the  creeds — the  test  of 
conduct.  More  and  more,  people  who 
possess  either  religious  belief  or  aspira- 
tion after  religious  belief  are  growing  to 
demand  conduct  as  the  ultimate  test  of 
the  worth  of  the  belief.  I  hope  that 
after  what  I  have  said  no  man  can  sus- 
pect me  of  failure  rightly  to  estimate  the 
enormous  influence  that  study  of  the 
Bible  should  have  on  our  lives;  but  I 
would  rather  not  see  a  man  study  it  at 
all  than  have  him  read  it  as  a  fetish  on 
Sunday  and  disregard  its  teachings  on 
all  other  days  of  the  week;  because,  evil 
though  we  think  the  conduct  of  the  man 
who  disregards  its  teachings  on  week 
days,  it  is  still  worse  if  that  conduct  is 
tainted  with  the  mean  vice  of  hypocrisy. 
The  measure  of  our  respect  for  and  be- 
lief in  the  man  and  the  woman  who  do 
try  to  shape  their  lives  by  the  highest 

84 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

ethical  standards  inculcated  in  the 
Scriptures  must  in  large  part  be  also  the 
measure  of  our  contempt  for  those  who 
ostentatiously  read  the  Bible  and  then 
disregard  its  teachings  in  their  dealings 
with  their  fellow-men. 

I  do  not  like  the  thief,  big  or  little;  I 
do  not  like  him  in  business  and  I  do  not 
like  him  in  politics;  but  I  dislike  him 
most  when,  to  shield  himself  from  the 
effects  of  his  wrong-doing,  he  claims 
that,  after  all,  he  is  a  "religious  man." 
He  is  not  a  religious  man,  save  in  the 
sense  that  the  Pharisee  was  a  religious 
man  in  the  time  of  the  Saviour.  The 
man  who  advances  the  fact  that  he  goes 
to  church  and  reads  the  Bible,  as  an  off- 
set to  the  fact  that  he  has  acted  like  a 
scoundrel  in  his  public  or  private  rela- 
tions, only  writes  his  own  condemnation 
in  larger  letters  than  before.  And  so 

85 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

a  man  or  a  woman  who  reads  and  quotes 
the  Bible  as  a  warrant  and  an  excuse  for 
hardheartedness  and  uncharitableness 
and  lack  of  mercy  to  friend  or  neighbor 
is  reading  and  quoting  the  Bible  to  his 
or  her  own  damage,  perhaps  to  his  or 
her  own  destruction.  Let  the  man  who 
goes  to  church,  who  reads  the  Bible,  feel 
that  it  is  peculiarly  incumbent  upon  him 
so  to  lead  his  life  in  the  face  of  the  world 
that  no  discredit  shall  be  brought  upon 
the  creed  he  professes,  that  no  discredit 
shall  attach  to  the  book  in  accordance 
with  which  he  asserts  that  he  leads  his 
own  life.  Sometimes  I  have  seen — all 
of  you  have  seen — the  appeal  made  to 
stand  by  a  man  who  has  done  evil,  on  the 
ground  that  he  is  a  pillar  of  the  church. 
Such  a  man  is  a  rotten  pillar  of  any 
church.  And  the  professors  of  any 
creed,  the  men  belonging  to  any  church, 

86 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

should  be  more  jealous  than  any  out- 
sider in  holding  such  a  man  to  account, 
in  demanding  that  his  practice  shall 
square  with  the  high  professions  of  be- 
lief. Such  a  man  sins  not  only  against 
the  moral  law,  sins  not  only  against  the 
community  as  a  whole,  but  sins,  above 
all,  against  his  own  church,  against  all 
who  profess  religion,  against  all  who  be- 
long to  churches,  because  he  by  his  life 
gives  point  to  the  sneer  of  the  cynic  who 
disbelieves  in  all  application  of  Christian 
ethics  to  life,  and  who  tries  to  make  the 
ordinary  man  distrust  church  people  as 
hypocrites.  Whenever  any  church  mem- 
ber is  guilty  of  business  dishonesty  or 
political  dishonesty  or  offenses  against 
the  moral  law  in  any  way,  those  who  are 
members  of  churches  should  feel  a  far 
greater  regret  and  disappointment  than 
those  who  are  not  members.  They  can- 

87 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

not  afford  for  one  moment  to  let  it  be 
supposed  that  they  exact  from  the  at- 
tenders  at  church  any  less  strict  obser- 
vance of  the  moral  law  than  if  they  did 
not  attend  church.  They  cannot  af- 
ford to  let  the  outside  world  even  for  a 
moment  think  that  they  accept  church- 
going  and  Bible-readers  as  substitutes 
for,  instead  of  incitements  toward,  lead- 
ing a  higher  and  better  and  more  useful 
life.  We  must  strive  each  of  us  so  to 
conduct  our  own  lives  as  to  be,  to  a 
certain  extent  at  least,  our  brother's 
keeper.  We  must  show  that  we  actually 
do  take  into  our  own  souls  the  teachings 
that  we  read;  that  we  apply  to  ourselves 
the  Gospel  teaching  that  a  corrupt  tree 
cannot  bring  forth  good  fruit,  and  that 
the  sound  tree  must  prove  its  soundness 
by  the  fruit  it  brings  forth;  that  we  ap- 
ply to  ourselves  the  teachings  of  the 

88 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

epistle  wherein  we  are  warned  to  be 
doers  of  the  world  and  not  hearers  only. 
I  have  asked  you  to  read  the  Bible  for 
the  beautiful  English  and  for  the  history 
it  teaches,  as  well  as  for  the  grasp  it 
gives  you  upon  the  proper  purpose  of 
mankind.  Of  course  if  you  read  it  only 
for  aesthetic  purposes,  if  you  read  it 
without  thought  of  following  its  ethical 
teachings,  then  you  are  apt  to  do  but 
little  good  to  your  fellow-men;  for  if 
you  regard  the  reading  of  it  as  an  intel- 
lectual diversion  only,  and,  above  all,  if 
you  regard  this  reading  simply  as  an 
outward  token  of  Sunday  respectability, 
small  will  be  the  good  that  you  yourself 
get  from  it.  Our  success  in  striving  to 
help  our  fellow-men,  and  therefore  to 
help  ourselves,  depends  largely  upon  our 
success  as  we  strive,  with  whatever 
shortcomings,  with  whatever  failures,  to 

89 


The  Bible  and  the  Life  of  the  People 

lead  our  lives  in  accordance  with  the 
great  ethical  principles  laid  down  in  the 
life  of  Christ,  and  in  the  New  Testament 
writings  which  seek  to  expound  and  ap- 
ply his  teachings. 


90 


THE  PUBLIC  SERVANT  AND  THE 
EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT 

I  am  overcome  more  and  more  with 
your  good  nature  in  coming  here.  I 
learn  a  great  deal  more  from  you  than 
you  can  possibly  learn  from  me. 

Today  I  come  to  speak  on  the  text 
"The  Public  Servant  and  the  Eighth 
Commandment"  and  like  some  other 
preachers  I  do  not  intend  to  keep  purely 
to  that  text.  I  chose  the  two  titles  I 
speak  upon  today  and  tomorrow  because 
I  wish  to  lay  especial  stress  upon  the 
prime  virtue  of  the  public  servant  and 
therefore  the  prime  crime  of  the  un- 
worthy public  servant;  and  also  upon 
the  prime  virtue  and  the  corresponding 
prime  crime  of  the  man  who  writes 
about  the  public  servant,  the  man  of  the 
newspaper  press  and  magazines.  With 
the  latter  I  shall  deal  tomorrow.  Today 

91 


The  Public  Servant  and 


I  wish  to  speak  of  the  public  servant. 
Because  the  first  essential  in  a  public 
man  is  honesty,  I  have  chosen  as  my 
title  the  public  servant  and  the  eighth 
commandment;  but  I  wish  to  speak  of 
much  more  than  the  eighth  command- 
ment in  connection  with  the  public  ser- 
vant, and  I  wish  to  speak  of  the  attitude 
of  the  public  as  well  as  of  the  attitude  of 
its  servant. 

There  used  to  be  in  the  army  an  old 
proverb  that  there  were  no  bad  regi- 
ments, but  plenty  of  bad  colonels.  So 
in  private  life  I  have  grown  to  believe 
that  if  you  always  find  bad  servants  in 
a  household  you  want  to  look  out  for  the 
mistress.  I  wonder  if  you  grasp  just 
what  I  mean  by  that?  If  you  always 
find  bad  public  servants,  look  out  for  the 
public!  We  here — you  my  hearers  and 
I — live  in  a  government  where  we  are 

92 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

the  people  and  in  consequence  where  we 
are  not  to  be  excused  if  the  government 
goes  wrong.  There  are  many  countries 
where  the  government  can  be  very 
wrong  indeed  and  where  nevertheless  it 
can  be  said  that  the  people  are  funda- 
mentally right,  for  they  don't  choose 
their  public  servants,  they  don't  choose 
their  government.  On  the  contrary  we 
do  choose  our  government,  not  tempor- 
arily but  permanently,  and  in  the  long 
run  our  public  servants  must  necessarily 
be  what  we  choose  to  have  them.  They 
represent  us;  they  must  represent  our 
self-restraint  and  sense  of  decency  and 
common  sense,  or  else,  our  folly,  our 
wickedness,  or  at  least  our  supine  indif- 
ference in  letting  others  do  the  work  of 
government  for  us.  Not  only  should  we 
have  the  right  type  of  public  servants, 
but  we  should  remember  that  the  wrong 

93 


The  Public  Servant  and 


type  discredits  not  only  the  man  himself 
but  each  of  us  whose  servant  he  is. 
Sometimes  I  hear  our  countrymen  in- 
veigh against  politicians;  I  hear  our 
countrymen  abroad  saying,  "Oh,  you 
mustn't  judge  us  by  our  politicians."  I 
always  want  to  interrupt  and  answer, 
"you  must  judge  us  by  our  politicians." 
We  pretend  to  be  the  masters — we,  the 
people — and  if  we  permit  ourselves  to  be 
ill  served,  to  be  served  by  corrupt  and 
incompetent  and  inefficient  men,  then 
on  our  own  heads  must  the  blame  rest. 

The  other  day  I  spoke  to  you  of  the 
prime  need  of  having  each  man  act  the 
good  citizen  first  in  his  own  home,  and 
I  added  that  unless  he  did,  he  could  not 
be  a  good  citizen.  But  that  is  not 
enough.  In  addition  the  man  must  do 
his  part,  not  merely  in  the  election  of 
candidates,  but  in  creating  the  kind  of 

94 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

atmosphere  which  will  make  the  public 
man  unwilling  to  do  wrong,  and  espe- 
cially unwilling  to  permit  wrong  in  its 
grosser  forms. 

I  began  my  education  early,  imme- 
diately after  leaving  college;  for  about 
that  time  I  first  began  to  spend  a  good 
deal  of  my  time  west  of  the  Mississippi, 
and  I  also  went  into  the  New  York  legis- 
lature, a  by  no  means  wholly  arcadian 
body.  It  is  a  little  difficult  to  persuade 
me  that  politically  we  are  growing 
worse.  I  do  not  think  so.  I  thing  that 
politically  we  have  grown  a  little  better 
during  the  thirty  years  that  I  have 
watched  politics  close  at  hand.  We  have 
slipped  back,  now  and  then,  we  have 
had  trouble  of  every  kind — local  disturb- 
ances— yet  on  the  whole  I  believe  we 
have  grown  better  and  not  worse;  but 
there  is  still  ample  room  for  improve- 
ment! 

95 


The  Public  Servant  and 


One  of  the  first  things  that  struck  me 
in  the  legislature  was  the  amount  of 
downright  corruption  that  I  saw  and  the 
utter  cynicism  with  which  many  of  the 
men  who  practiced  the  corruption  spoke 
of  it.  The  next  thing  that  struck  me, 
as  I  grew  better  acquainted  with  politi- 
cal conditions,  was  the  difficulty  in 
arousing  the  public  to  an  attitude  of  hos- 
tility towards  that  corruption.  This 
was  largely  because  the  public  declined 
to  be  awakened  unless  they  thought  the 
corruption  was  directly  exercised  at 
their  own  expense;  in  other  words,  it 
availed  little  to  go  into  a  district  and  say 
"look  at  that  man's  votes  on  such  and 
such  questions,  they  show  that  he  isn't 
a  straight  man,"  unless  the  people  of  the 
district  believed  that  their  own  interest 
was  involved  in  one  of  the  questions 
upon  which  the  man  had  voted  wrong. 

96 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

For  instance,  there  were  in  the  legisla- 
ture at  that  time  many  country  members 
who  were  scrupulous  to  do  right,  or  at 
least  to  appear  to  do  right,  on  the  small- 
est questions  affecting  their  own  dis- 
tricts, but  who  would  go  very  far  wrong 
indeed  when  the  question  was  one  in- 
volving some  interest  in  New  York  City; 
for  they  trusted  to  the  fact  that  their 
people  did  not  care  how  they  voted  on 
New  York  City  matters  as  long  as  they 
kept  straight  on  matters  immediately 
affecting  the  constituents  themselves. 
Naturally  men  who  held  such  a  stand- 
ard were  certain  when  they  got  into 
higher  offices  to  be  false  to  their  trust. 
You  cannot  have  unilateral  honesty. 
The  minute  that  a  man  is  dishonest 
along  certain  lines,  even  though  he  pre- 
tends to  be  honest  along  other  lines,  you 
can  be  sure  that  it  is  only  a  pretense,  it 

97 


The  Public  Servant  and 


is  only  expediency;  and  you  cannot  trust 
to  the  mere  sense  of  expediency  to  hold 
a  man  straight  under  heavy  pressure.  I 
very  early  made  up  my  mind  that  it  was 
a  detriment  to  the  public  to  have  in  pub- 
lic life  any  man  whose  attitude  was 
merely  that  he  would  be  as  honest  as  the 
law  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  be. 
The  kind  of  honesty  which  essentially 
consists  merely  in  too  great  acuteness  to 
get  into  jail  is  a  mighty  poor  type  of 
honesty  upon  which  to  rely;  because,  up 
near  the  border  line  between  what  can 
and  what  can  not  be  punished  by  law, 
there  come  many  occasions  when  the 
man  can  defile  the  public  service,  can 
defy  the  public  conscience,  can  in  spirit 
be  false  to  his  oath,  and  yet  technically 
keep  his  skirts  clear.  When  I  say  that 
the  prime  need  is  that  the  public  servant 
shall  obey  the  eighth  commandment  I 

98 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

do  not  mean  merely  that  he  shall  keep 
himself  in  such  shape  that  a  clever  law- 
yer can  get  him  off  if  he  is  charged  with 
theft.  I  mean  that  he  shall  be  honest 
intensively  and  extensively.  I  mean 
that  he  shall  act  with  the  same  fine  sense 
of  honor  toward  the  public  and  on  be- 
half of  the  public  that  we  expect  to  be 
shown  by  those  neighbors  with  whom 
we  are  willing  to  trust  not  only  our 
money,  but  our  good  names.  If  you  in- 
tend to  trust  a  neighbor,  the  kind  of 
neighbor  whom  you  certainly  will  not 
choose  is  the  man  of  whom  it  can  only 
be  said  that  you  are  quite  sure  you  won't 
be  able  to  get  him  in  jail.  The  kind  of 
mental  acuteness  that  is  shown  merely 
by  a  thorough  study  of  the  best  methods 
of  escaping  successful  criminal  proced- 
ure is  not  the  kind  of  mental  acuteness 
that  you  value  in  your  friend,  in  the  man 

99 


The  Public  Servant  and 


with  whom  you  have  business  relations; 
and  it  should  be  the  last  type  of  mental 
ability,  the  last  type  of  moral  attitude, 
which  you  tolerate  in  a  public  man. 

Perhaps  the  most  dangerous  of  all 
public  servants,  however,  is  the  public 
servant  who  gets  into  office  by  persuad- 
ing a  section  of  the  public  that  he  will 
do  something  that  is  just  a  little  bit 
crooked  in  their  interest.  I  do  not  care 
in  the  least  what  section  of  the  public  is 
thus  persuaded.  I  do  not  care  whether 
it  is  the  great  corporation  man  who 
wishes  to  see  a  given  individual  made 
judge,  or  executive  officer,  or  legislator, 
"because  he  is  our  man  and  he  will  look 
out  for  the  rights  of  property,"  or 
whether,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  the 
wage-worker,  the  laboring  man,  who 
supports  some  candidate  because  that 
candidate  announces  that  he  is  "the 

100 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

friend  of  labor,"  although  the  man  to 
whom  the  appeal  is  made  ought  to  un- 
derstand also  that  the  candidate  is  the 
foe  of  decency.  Capitalist  and  wage- 
worker  alike  will  do  well  to  remember 
that  their  interests  face  to  face  with  the 
public  man  are  primarily  as  those  affect- 
ing all  good  American  citizens,  and  that 
whatever  the  temporary  advantage  may 
be,  they  irretrievably  harm  themselves 
and  the  children  who  are  to  come  after 
them  if  they  permit  themselves  to  be 
drawn  into  any  other  attitude. 

The  capitalist  who  because  he  thinks 
it  is  the  interest  of  his  class  to  have  in 
high  office  a  corrupt  man  who  will  serve 
his  class  interest  is  laying  up  for  himself 
and  for  his  children  a  day  of  terrible 
retribution;  for  if  that  type  of  capitalist 
has  his  way  long  enough  he  will  per- 
suade the  whole  community  that  the  in- 

101 


The  Public  Servant  and 


terest  of  the  community  is  bound  up  in 
overthrowing  every  man  in  public  office 
who  serves  property,  even  though  he 
serves  it  honestly.  The  corrupt  capital- 
ist may  help  himself  for  the  moment, 
and  he  may  be  defended  by  others  of  his 
own  class  on  grounds  of  expediency;  but 
in  the  end  he  works  fearful  damage  to 
his  fellows.  If  a  business  man  cannot 
run  a  given  business  except  by  bribing 
or  by  submitting  to  blackmail  let  him 
get  out  of  it  and  into  some  other  busi- 
ness. If  he  cannot  run  his  business  save 
on  condition  of  doing  things  which  can 
only  be  done  in  the  darkness,  then  let 
him  enter  into  some  totally  different 
field  of  activity.  The  test  is  easy.  Let 
him  ask  whether  he  is  afraid  anything 
will  be  found  out  or  not.  If  he  is  not, 
he  is  all  right;  if  he  is,  he  is  all  wrong. 
So  much  for  the  capitalist. 

102 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

Let  the  wage-worker  in  his  turn  re- 
member that  the  candidate  for  public 
office  who  appeals  for  his  support  upon 
the  ground  that  he  will  condone  lawless 
violence,  that  he  will  look  the  other  way 
when  violence  is  perpetrated,  that  he 
will  recognize  the  rules  of  a  labor  organ- 
ization of  any  kind  as  standing  above 
the  Constitution  and  the  laws  of  his 
country,  let  the  laboring  man  remember 
that  if  he  supports  such  a  candidate  he 
in  his  turn  is  doing  his  best  to  bring 
about  a  condition  of  things  where  de- 
mocracy would  come  to  an  end,  where 
self-rule  would  come  to  an  end.  Let  the 
capitalist  remember  that  he  had  better 
be  most  shocked  at  the  deeds  of  his  own 
class,  and  not  at  the  misdeeds  of  the  men 
of  another  class.  And  let  the  laboring 
man  remember  in  his  turn  that  the  foe 
against  whom  he  should  most  carefully 

103 


The  Public  Servant  and 


guard  is  the  corrupt  labor  man,  the 
labor  candidate  who  preaches  violence, 
envy,  class  hatred.  That  is  the  kind  of 
man  who  most  jeopards  the  welfare  of 
the  wageworker,  just  as  the  successful 
corruptionist,  the  capitalist  who  has 
reached  a  high  position  in  the  financial 
world  by  the  practice  of  acts  that  will 
not  bear  the  light  of  day,  is  really  the 
worst  foe  of  the  very  property  classes 
that  are  sometimes  so  misguided  as  to 
rally  to  his  defense  when  he  is  attacked. 
I  shall  tell  you  one  story:  In  the  old 
days  I  used  to  have  a  cow  ranch  in  the 
short  grass  country.  At  that  time  there 
were  no  fences  within  a  thousand  miles 
of  it.  If  a  calf  was  passed  by  on  the 
roundup  so  that  next  year  when  it  was 
a  yearling  and  was  not  following  any 
cow  it  was  unbranded,  it  was  called  a 
maverick.  It  was  range  custom  or  range 

104 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

law  that  if  a  maverick  were  found  on  any 
range  the  man  finding  it  would  put  on 
the  brand  of  that  range.  One  day  I  had 
hired  a  new  cow-puncher,  and  when  he 
and  I  were  riding  we  struck  a  maverick. 
It  was  on  a  neighbor's  range,  the  Thistle 
Range.  The  puncher  roped  and  threw 
the  maverick;  we  built  a  little  fire  of 
sage-brush,  and  took  out  the  cinch  iron 
and  heated  it  to  run  on  the  brand.  When 
he  started  to  run  on  the  brand  I  said  to 
him  "the  Thistle  brand";  he  answered, 
"that's  all  right,  boss,  I  know  my  busi- 
ness." In  a  minute  I  said  "hold  on, 
you're  putting  on  my  brand";  to  which 
he  answered  "Yes,  I  always  put  on  the 
boss's  brand."  I  said  "Oh,  well,  you  go 
back  to  the  house  and  get  your  time." 
He  rose,  saying  "What's  that  for,  I  was 
putting  on  your  brand";  and  I  closed 
the  conversation  with  the  remark  "Yes, 

105 


The  Public  Servant  and 


my  friend,  and  if  you  will  steal  for  me 
you  will  steal  from  me."  That  applies 
in  lots  of  occupations  besides  those  of 
the  cow  punchers.  Nowhere  does  it 
apply  more  clearly  than  in  public  life. 

One  of  the  pains  of  our  development 
as  a  people  has  been  the  tendency  to 
deify  what  is  called  "smartness,"  mean- 
ing by  smartness  adroitness  and  skill 
unaccompanied  by  any  scruple  in  con- 
nection with  the  observance  of  a  moral 
law.  We  have  all  of  us  heard — I  have 
heard  it  in  the  West  as  well  as  in  the 
East — some  man  alluded  to  as  an  awful 
scoundrel,  and  another  person  replying 
"Oh  yes,  perhaps  he  ain't  quite  straight, 
but  I  tell  you,  that  fellow  is  smart !"  You 
must  yourselves  have  heard  at  times  this 
kind  of  statement  made  about  some 
scoundrel  whom  you  could  not  under- 
stand decent  men  supporting;  and  the 

106 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

statement  is  acted  upon  by  many  little 
men,  and  by  many  big  men,  both  in 
business  life  and  in  political  life.  Well, 
we  shall  never  reach  the  proper  standard 
in  public  service  or  in  private  conduct 
until  we  have  a  public  opinion  so 
aroused,  so  resolute,  so  intelligent,  that 
it  shall  be  understood  that  we  are  more 
bitter  against  the  scoundrel  that  suc- 
ceeds than  against  the  scoundrel  that 
fails. 

The  other  day  I  noticed  a  brief  state- 
ment made  by  a  certain  Senator,  which, 
as  far  as  I  have  seen,  has  not  been  com- 
mented on  at  all,  but  which  struck  me  as 
highly  significant.  The  Senator  in 
question  had  been  defending  Mr.  Lori- 
mer,  and  in  alluding  to  some  of  the  men 
who  had  testified  that  they  had  been 
bribed  to  vote  for  the  Illinois  Senator, 
he  quite  casually  remarked  that  in  his 

107 


The  Public  Servant  and 


experience  a  knave  was  always  a  fool. 
His  idea  was  that  no  very  high  grade 
intelligence  was  ever  found  in  a  knave. 
The  Senator  was  entirely  wrong.  The 
knave  that  fails  is  usually  a  fool,  but  the 
knave  that  succeeds  may  be  a  very  intel- 
ligent man,  and  his  intelligence  when 
unaccompanied  by  any  trace  of  moral 
instinct,  merely  makes  him  infinitely  the 
most  dangerous  man  that  this  commu- 
nity can  bring  forth;  and  the  Senator  in 
the  remark  he  made  came  dangerously 
near  assuming  the  very  dangerous  posi- 
tion that  a  knave  who  is  sufficiently  able 
is  therefore  relieved  from  the  odium  of 
knavery. 

We  ought  to  admire  intelligence  and 
ability;  but  only  when  the  intelligence 
and  ability  are  controlled  and  guided  by 
the  will  to  do  right.  Intelligence  and 
ability  divorced  from  the  moral  instinct 

108 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

merely  make  the  man  an  infinitely  dan- 
gerous wild  beast  whom  it  is  our  busi- 
ness to  hunt  out  of  the  political  life,  and, 
so  far  as  we  can,  out  of  the  business  life, 
of  the  community. 

It  has  been  finely  said  that  the  su- 
preme task  of  humanity  is  to  subordi- 
nate the  whole  fabric  of  civilization  to 
the  service  of  the  soul.  This  does  not 
mean  that  we  are  to  neglect  the  things 
of  the  body.  It  means  that  we  are  to 
treat  the  welfare  of  the  body  as  neces- 
sary, as  a  good  in  itself;  but  still  more 
as  a  good  because  upon  that  welfare  we 
can  build  the  higher  welfare  of  the  soul. 
There  is  a  soul  in  the  community,  a  soul 
in  the  nation,  just  exactly  as  there  is  a 
soul  in  the  individual;  and  exactly  as  the 
individual  hopelessly  mars  himself  if  he 
lets  his  conscience  be  dulled  by  the  con- 
stant repetition  of  unworthy  acts,  so  the 

109 


The  Public  Servant  and 


nation  will  hopelessly  blunt  the  popular 
conscience  if  it  permits  its  public  men 
continually  to  do  acts  which  the  nation 
in  its  heart  of  hearts  knows  are  acts  that 
cast  discredit  upon  our  whole  public  life. 
It  is  an  old  and  a  trite  saying  that  our 
actions  have  more  effect  upon  our  prin- 
ciples than  our  principles  upon  our  ac- 
tions. I  remember  some  time  ago  out 
on  the  range  listening  to  a  fine  old  fellow 
speaking  to  his  nephew  who  was  a  fine 
young  man,  but  nervous  in  his  strange 
surroundings,  and  entirely  unaccus- 
tomed to  horses.  The  young  fellow  had 
asked  his  uncle  how  he  could  grow  fear- 
less in  handling  horses,  because,  he  said, 
he  was  sure  that  if  he  only  could  get  so 
that  he  would  not  be  afraid  of  them  he 
could  handle  them  all  right.  The  old 
uncle  responded,  "Now,  I'll  tell  you,  you 
go  ahead  and  handle  them  as  if  you  were 

no 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

not  afraid  of  them  and  gradually  you 
will  stop  being  afraid  of  them."  In  other 
words,  the  boy  could  not  afford  to  wait 
until  he  stopped  being  afraid  of  the 
horse  before  he  rode  it.  He  had  to  ride 
until  he  stopped  being  afraid  of  it.  He 
had  to  get  the  habit  of  not  being  afraid 
of  it,  and  when  once  he  had  acquired  the 
habit  of  riding  as  if  he  were  not  afraid, 
all  cause  for  worry  disappeared  and 
gradually  all  fear  itself  disappeared.  It 
is  just  the  same  way  in  public  life.  If 
you  habitually  suffer  your  public  repre- 
sentatives to  be  dishonest  you  will  grad- 
ually lose  all  power  of  insisting  upon 
honesty.  If  you  let  them  continually 
do  little  acts  that  are  not  quite  straight 
you  will  gradually  induce  in  their  minds 
the  mental  attitude  which  will  make  it 
hopeless  to  get  from  them  anything  that 
is  not  crooked.  If  in  this  state,  in  Cali- 

111 


The  Public  Servant  and 


fornia,  or  in  New  York,  you  for  a  gen- 
eration permit  big  corporations  to  pur- 
chase favors  to  which  they  are  not  en- 
titled you  will  breed  up  a  race  of  public 
men  and  business  men  who  accept  that 
condition  of  things  as  normal.  And 
then,  my  friends,  when  you  finally  wake 
up  I  wish  you  would  remember  that 
great  though  their  blame  may  be  your 
blame  is  even  greater  for  having  per- 
mitted such  a  condition  of  things  to 
arise. 

When  the  awakening  comes,  you  will 
undoubtedly  have  to  change  the  ma- 
chinery of  the  law  in  order  to  meet  the 
conditions  that  have  become  so  bad,  but 
do  not  forget  that  no  nation  was  ever 
yet  saved  by  governmental  machinery 
alone.  You  must  have  the  right  kind 
of  law;  but  the  best  law  that  the  wit  of 
man  can  devise  will  amount  to  nothing 

112 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

if  you  have  not  the  right  kind  of  spirit 
in  the  man  behind  the  law.  And  again, 
friends,  when  you  finally  revolt,  as  re- 
volt you  will  and  must  against  being 
ruled  by  corporations,  and  when  you 
assume  the  power  over  them,  then  is  the 
time  to  remember  that  it  is  your  duty  to 
be  honest  to  them  just  as  much  as  to 
exact  honesty  from  them;  and  that  if 
you  are  guilty  of  the  folly  and  iniquity 
of  doing  wrong  at  their  expense,  you 
have  not  made  a  step  in  advance,  even 
though  you  have  stopped  them  from 
doing  wrong  at  your  expense.  You 
must  demand  honesty  or  you  are  not 
men;  and  you  must  do  honesty  or  you 
are  not  decent  men. 

Sometimes  I  have  been  asked  as  to 
why  I  draw  the  distinction  in  need  of 
governmental  action  between  the  big 
business  corporation  and  the  smaller 

113 


The  Public  Servant  and 


corporation.  I  think  it  is  perfectly 
clear.  Each  one  of  us  deals  in  his  do- 
mestic relations  with  a  number  of  differ- 
ent men,  the  grocer,  the  dry  goods  mer- 
chant, the  carpenter,  the  butcher,  the 
baker,  and  a  number  of  others.  Now, 
we  do  not  need  any  governmental  help 
in  dealing  with  those  men,  because  they 
are  about  our  size.  If  the  grocer  doesn't 
give  you  the  proper  kind  of  goods  you 
will  change  the  grocer,  and  if  you  don't 
pay  the  grocer  he  will  change  you.  But 
if  the  grocer  becomes — I  use  the  tech- 
nical terminology — a  captain  of  indus- 
try and  accumulates  a  great  fortune  and 
joins  with  other  men  of  the  same  type 
in  a  great  business — a  great  railroad,  a 
great  oil  or  coal  company,  I  don't  care 
what  it  is — then  they  create  a  mighty 
artificial  entity  called  a  corporation,  and 
no  one  of  us  individually  can  deal  satis- 

114 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

factorily  with  that  corporation  because 
we  are  dealing  with  an  entity  that  is 
not  our  size.  You  can  change  the  gro- 
cer if  he  serves  you  ill;  but  if  you  live 
along  the  line  of  the  only  railway  in  the 
country  and  wish  to  ship  goods  you 
must  ship  them  on  the  railway's  terms 
or  not  ship  them  at  all.  That  is  the  only 
alternative.  If  you  are  dealing  with  a 
big  corporation  that  controls  all  the  pro- 
ducts of  an  industry  or  if  you  are  work- 
ing for  that  corporation,  you  must  ac- 
cept what  it  gives  or  accept  nothing. 
The  situation  is  reversed  from  what  it 
was  previously.  Therefore  it  becomes 
necessary  to  replace  our  individual 
strength  by  the  strength  of  all  of  us  col- 
lectively, so  that  we  may  have  to  repres- 
ent us  an  artificial  entity  as  big  as  the 
corporation.  If  the  corporation  works 
only  inside  a  state,  why  then  this  entity 

115 


The  Public  Servant  and 


must  be  the  state  government;  if  it 
works  in  a  number  of  different  states, 
then  we  invoke  the  only  man  big  enough 
to  deal  with  it — Uncle  Sam. 

And  now  how  shall  Uncle  Sam  deal 
with  it?  Well,  fundamentally  just  ex- 
actly as  we  deal  with  the  grocer  and  the 
grocer  with  us.  If  we  do  not  pay  the 
grocer  enough  to  give  him  a  profit  he 
will  either  have  to  abandon  serving  us 
or  he  will  have  to  get  out  of  business. 
He  cannot  run  his  business  unless  we 
pay  him  enough  for  him  to  make  money. 
It  is  just  the  same  with  a  big  corpora- 
tion. If  we  insist  upon  making  stipula- 
tions on  behalf  of  the  Government,  on 
behalf  of  the  people,  such  that  the  cor- 
poration cannot  carry  them  out  and  give 
any  money  to  those  who  have  built  it 
up,  why  either  that  corporation  will  quit 
business  or  at  least  no  other  corporation 

116 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

will  go  into  business.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  each  householder  here  always 
pays  all  his  bills  without  looking  into 
them  it  does  not  show  that  he  has  a  nice 
disposition,  it  shows  that  he  is  a  fool. 
In  the  same  way  I  want  Uncle  Sam  to 
do  scrupulous  justice  to  the  corporation, 
but  I  want  him  to  say  in  return,  now  I 
want  you  to  behave  yourself,  I  have  no 
doubt  that  you  would  like  to  behave 
yourself;  but  whether  you  would  or 
would  not,  1  will  see  that  you  do  behave 
yourself. 

In  the  century  which  is  now  well  open 
we  shall  have  to  use  the  legislative 
power  of  the  state  to  make  conditions 
better  and  more  even  as  between  man 
and  man.  Our  aim  must  be  to  control 
the  big  corporation  so  that  while  it 
earns  an  ample  reward  upon  its  invest- 
ment it  gives  to  the  public  in  return  an 

117 


The  Public  Servant  and 


ample  service  for  the  reward  it  receives. 
More  and  more  we  must  shape  condi- 
tions so  that  each  man  shall  have  a  fair 
chance  in  life;  that  so  far  as  we  can 
bring  it  about — I  do  not  mean  to  say 
that  we  can  bring  it  about  absolutely  but 
insofar  as  we  can  approximately  bring 
it  about — each  man  shall  start  in  life 
on  a  measurable  equality  of  opportunity 
with  other  men,  unhelped  by  privilege 
himself,  unhindered  by  privilege  in 
others.  Now  understand  me:  I  do  not 
mean  for  a  moment  that  we  should  try  to 
bring  about  the  impossible  and  undesir- 
able condition,  of  giving  to  all  men 
equality  of  reward.  As  long  as  human 
nature  is  what  it  is  there  will  be  in- 
equality of  service,  and  where  there  is 
inequality  of  service  there  ought  to  be 
inequality  of  reward.  That  is  justice. 
Equal  reward  for  unequal  service  is  in- 

118 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

justice.  All  I  am  trying  to  help  bring 
about  is  such  a  condition  of  affairs  that 
there  shall  be  measurable  approximation 
to  a  higher  reward  than  at  present  for 
the  right  kind  of  service,  and  a  less  re- 
ward than  at  present  for  some  forms  of 
activity  that  do  not  represent  real  ser- 
vice at  all.  There  must  be  an  oppor- 
tunity for  each  man  to  show  the  stuff 
that  is  in  him.  But  in  the  last  analysis 
he  must  help  himself.  Every  one  of  us 
stumbles  at  times.  There  is  not  a  man 
here  who  does  not  at  times  stumble;  and 
when  that  is  the  case  shame  on  his 
brother  who  will  not  stretch  out  a  help- 
ing hand  to  him.  Help  him  up;  but 
when  he  has  been  helped  up  then  it  is 
his  duty  and  business  to  walk  for  him- 
self. Help  him  up;  but  if  he  lies  down, 
you  cannot  carry  him.  You  will  not  do 
any  good  to  him  and  you  will  interfere 

119 


The  Public  Servant  and 


with  your  own  usefulness  to  yourself 
and  to  others. 

Our  whole  governmental  policy 
should  be  shaped  to  secure  a  more  even 
justice  as  between  man  and  man,  and 
better  conditions  such  as  will  permit 
each  man  to  do  the  best  there  is  in  him. 
In  other  words,  our  governmental  ideal 
is  to  secure  as  far  as  possible  the  even 
distribution  of  justice — using  the  word 
justice  in  its  largest  and  finest  sense. 
You  cannot  secure  justice  if  you  haven't 
just  and  upright  public  servants.  You 
cannot  secure  great  reforms  if  the  foun- 
tain head  from  which  the  reforms  are  to 
come  is  corrupt.  Our  democracy  in 
this  our  country  now  approximates  the 
hundred  million  limit  of  population;  our 
great  democracy  has  great  and  complex 
needs;  we  need  to  have  wise  men,  far- 
sighted  men  in  public  office,  so  that  they 

120 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

may  study  those  needs,  and,  so  far  as 
may  be,  meet  them.  But  no  wisdom  in 
a  public  servant  will  avail  if  the  public 
servant  is  not  honest;  and  he  will  not 
be  honest  unless  the  public  both  de- 
mands and  practices  honesty. 

I  plead  for  honesty  in  the  public  ser- 
vant, and  I  plead  for  it  strongly.  We 
need  ability  and  intelligence  to  help  us 
solve  the  problems  with  which  as  a 
nation  we  are  face  to  face.  We  cannot 
solve  them  without  ability,  without  in- 
telligence. But  what  we  need  most  of 
all  is  honesty,  honesty  in  our  people  and 
honesty  in  our  representatives.  And 
woe  to  us  as  a  nation  if  we  do  not  have 
the  honesty,  the  uprightness,  the  desire 
to  treat  each  man  with  wise  and  gener- 
ous and  considerate  justice. 

Last  year  I  was  in  the  Old  World,  and 
wherever  I  went  I  encountered  two 

121 


The  Public  Servant  and 


phases  of  feeling  that  seemed  contradic- 
tory. In  the  first  place,  wherever  I 
went  I  found  the  man  who  felt  that  he 
had  been  unjustly  treated  in  life  looking 
eagerly  toward  this  country  as  a  coun- 
try where  the  ideal  of  justice  between 
man  and  man  had  been  at  least  partially 
realized.  And  everywhere  I  went  1 
found  also,  oh,  my  friends,  a  very  differ- 
ent feeling,  a  feeling  of  doubt  and  mis- 
trust among  our  friends  and  admirers 
because  of  what  they  had  heard  of  our 
lack  of  integrity  and  honesty  in  public 
and  in  business  affairs.  I  wish  that  our 
people  could  realize  that  every  time 
word  is  sent  abroad  of  political  or  busi- 
ness corruption  or  mob  violence  in  this 
country,  it  saddens  the  heart  of  all  be- 
lievers in  popular  government,  every- 
where; and  it  is  a  subject  for  sneering 
mirth  to  every  reactionary,  to  every  man 
who  disbelieves  that  the  people  can 

122 


the  Eighth  Commandment 

control  themselves  and  do  justice  both 
to  themselves  and  to  others.  I  do  not 
suppose  that  if  we  come  short  in  our 
duty,  if  we  are  uninfluenced  by  the  ap- 
peal made  to  us  for  our  own  sakes  and 
for  the  sake  of  our  children,  we  can  be 
moved  by  an  appeal  made  for  other  peo- 
ple. Yet  I  believe  that  every  man  who 
has  the  inestimable  privilege  of  living 
here  in  our  free  land  should  feel  in  his 
soul,  deep  in  the  marrow  of  his  being, 
that  not  only  are  we  bound  to  act  justly 
and  honorably  and  honestly  as  a  nation 
for  our  own  sakes,  not  only  are  we 
bound  so  to  act  for  the  sake  of  the  chil- 
dren who  are  to  come  after  us,  but  that 
we  are  also  bound  thus  to  act  because 
all  over  the  world  the  peoples  are  look- 
ing eagerly  at  this  great  experiment  in 
popular  government;  and  shame  to  us,, 
woe  to  us,  if  our  conduct  dims  the  golden 
hope  of  the  nations  of  mankind. 

123 


THE  SHAPING  OF  PUBLIC  OPIN- 
ION AND  THE  NINTH  COM- 
MANDMENT 

Today  in  making  my  last  speech  to 
you  I  wish  to  thank  you  from  my  heart 
for  the  way  in  which  you  have  listened 
to  me. 

It  had  not  occurred  to  me  that  people 
would  come  in  numbers  sufficient  to  fill 
every  corner  of  this  theatre.  You  have 
made  me  both  very  grateful  and  a  little 
embarassed.  You  have  made  me  feel 
more  than  a  little  humble;  because  each 
time  I  saw  the  audience  I  was  afraid 
that  they  would  go  away  feeling  that 
they  had  not  received  just  what  they 
had  a  right  to  expect;  because,  friends, 
after  all,  the  message  I  have  to  give  to 
you  is  so  very  simple,  and  its  worth  de- 
pends so  purely  upon  the  spirit  in  which 
I  give  it  and  you  take  it. 

124 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

What  I  have  to  say  amounts  to  ab- 
solutely nothing  if  it  does  not  represent 
at  least  an  honest  effort  on  my  part  to 
live  up  to  what  I  preach,  and  if  it  does 
not  represent  a  purpose  on  your  part  to 
act  on  whatever  of  my  words  you  think 
it  worth  while  to  applaud.  Of  course, 
what  I  have  to  say  is  simple  because  the 
great  facts  of  life  are  simple;  and  I  am 
speaking  to  you,  my  fellow  citizens,  my 
fellow  Americans,  whom  I  trust  and  in 
whom  I  believe,  about  the  elemental 
needs  that  are  common  to  all  of  us,  and 
vital  to  all  of  us. 

A  cultivated  and  intellectual  paper 
once  complained  that  my  speeches 
lacked  subtlety.  So  they  do!  I  think 
that  the  command  or  entreaty  to  clean 
living  and  decent  politics  should  no 
more  be  subtle  than  a  command  in  battle 
should  be  subtle.  You  veterans,  over 

125 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

there,  what  you  wanted  to  have  your 
officer  say,  when  in  a  tight  place  was 
"Come  on,  boys";  and  it  was  no  use  his 
saying  it  unless  he  went  himself.  The 
most  admirable  address  that  could  pos- 
sibly be  delivered  by  an  officer  on  the 
field  would  be  hopelessly  marred  if  im- 
mediately afterwards  the  officer  went  to 
the  rear;  and  no  heartiness  of  enthus- 
iasm on  the  part  of  the  soldiers  who 
listened  to  the  address  would  atone  if 
they  then  failed  to  go  forward. 

The  purpose  of  the  command  or  the 
entreaty  or  the  adjuration  of  the  officer 
was  to  make  his  men  go  forward.  The 
exact  language  that  Sheridan  used  when 
he  came  back  from  Winchester  and  met 
his  men  going  the  wrong  way  matters 
little  from  the  classical  standpoint;  the 
point  was  that  after  hearing  it  the  men 
began  to  go  the  right  way;  and  they 

126 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

would  not  have  gone  the  right  way  if 
he  had  not  been  going  the  right  way 
himself.  In  war,  and  in  peace  also, 
words  are  of  use  only  as  they  are  trans- 
lated into  deeds. 

All  I  have  to  say  to  you  here  is  very 
simple;  and  yet  it  is  all  important.  Any 
good  that  will  come  from  it  to  you  will 
come  only  if  you  really  do  think  of  what 
I  have  said,  and  then,  if  it  agrees  with 
your  judgment,  if  you  try  to  act  a  little 
closer  to  the  right  standard  than  hither- 
tofore  you  have  been  doing.  And  right 
here  I  want  to  say  that  you  in  your  turn 
have  put  me  under  a  bond  of  obligation; 
for  after  having  spoken  to  you  as  I  have 
spoken  for  these  five  days  I  realize  that 
I  must  myself  try  to  make  my  conduct 
square  absolutely  with  my  words  and  I 
realize  also  that  I  have  more  to  learn 
than  to  teach. 

127 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

As  I  say,  I  would  like  you  to  test  what 
I  have  to  say  by  your  own  experiences. 
The  first  day  I  spoke  of  applied  ethics, 
of  realizable  ideals.  I  spoke  in  favor  of 
having  a  lofty  ideal  which  could  be  lived 
up  to.  Let  me  apply  what  I  have  to  say 
by  instances  taken  from  the  Civil  War, 
from  the  experience  of  the  men  in  blue 
and  the  men  in  gray — for  they  are  all 
brothers  now.  It  was  of  no  use  for  a 
man  to  enter  the  army  if  he  was  not 
actuated  by  a  lofty  ideal;  unless  he  had 
the  right  kind  of  ideal  of  personal  con- 
duct, unless  he  was  ashamed  to  flinch, 
ashamed  to  disgrace  himself  in  battle  or 
on  the  march,  then  he  was  of  no  use  in 
the  army.  It  was  necessary  that  he 
should  have  the  right  kind  of  ideal.  But 
it  was  even  more  necessary  that  he 
should  apply  that  ideal  in  practice.  I  do 
not  care  how  lofty  his  theory  of  conduct 

128 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

was,  that  theory  was  useless  if  when  he 
heard  the  bullets  he  was  unable  to  con- 
trol his  tendency  to  run  away.  The 
soldier  needed  a  lofty  ideal,  and  he  need- 
ed to  apply  that  ideal.  It  had  to  be  an 
ideal  that  he  could  measurably  realize 
on  the  field  of  battle.  It  must  be  just 
so  with  us  in  civil  life.  We  must  have 
a  lofty  ideal  of  conduct;  and  we  must 
strive  to  realize  that  ideal  in  practice. 
That  was  my  first  day's  lecture. 

The  tone  of  my  second  lecture  was 
that  the  man  must  do  well  in  his  own 
home  before  he  can  do  well  outside; 
that  the  man  must  be  a  decent  husband 
and  father,  decent  in  the  performance 
of  his  duty  toward  those  with  whom  he 
is  most  intimately  brought  into  con- 
tact, before  he  can  hope  to  amount  to 
anything  in  the  world  at  large. 

On  the  third  day  I  spoke  of  what  has 

129 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

been  for  many  centuries  the  great  guide 
to  righteousness  and  clean  living. 

Yesterday  I  spoke  of  the  public  man, 
of  his  cardinal  virtue,  honesty,  and  of 
the  relations  of  the  public  to  the  public 
man.  Let  me  again  there  take  an  ex- 
ample from  the  army.  I  spoke  of  the 
right  feeling  to  have  toward  the  success- 
ful man  and  of  the  right  feeling  for  the 
individuals  in  the  community  to  bear 
towards  one  another.  They  are  just 
such  feelings  as  the  soldiers  of  the  Civil 
war  bore  to  their  chiefs  and  to  one 
another.  No  soldier  worth  his  salt 
grudged  the  preference,  the  honor,  the 
reward  that  came  to  great  Generals  such 
as  Grant  and  Sheridan  and  Sherman, 
such  as  Lee  and  Johnson  and  Stonewall 
Jackson.  They  not  only  did  not  grudge 
any  reward  that  came  to  a  man  because 
he  earned  it,  but  they  scorned  the  crea- 

130 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

ture  who  did  grudge  such  reward.  It 
was  not  only  a  matter  of  justice,  it  was 
to  their  own  interest  to  see  the  fighting 
General,  the  General  who  could  carry  on 
a  campaign  and  fight  a  battle  success- 
fully put  high  up.  It  was  to  the  interest 
of  the  army  and  the  country  that  that 
man  should  be  rewarded.  What  the 
soldiers  grudged  was  a  reward  coming 
to  a  man  who  had  not  earned  it,  a  re- 
ward coming  to  a  General,  not  because 
he  was  a  first  class  General  in  the  field, 
but  because  he  had  pulled  wires  in 
Washington,  because  he  was  so  and  so's 
friend  and  had  such  and  such  influences 
behind  him,  so  that  he  was  shoved  up 
over  the  head  of  a  better  man.  That 
type  of  promotion  they  grudged  because 
that  type  of  promotion  was  not  earned 
by  service. 

It  is  just  so  with  us  in  private  life  and 

131 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

in  public  life.  It  is  a  scandal  and  a  shame 
to  grudge  the  reward  that  comes  to  the 
big  man  who  earns  a  fortune  by  render- 
ing service  to  his  fellows,  service  of  such 
a  kind  that  for  every  dollar  he  gets  he 
has  done  at  least  a  dollar's  worth  of 
good  to  someone  else.  It  is  to  the  in- 
terest of  all  of  us  to  encourage  that 
man.  It  is  eminently  to  our  interest, 
however,  to  discourage  the  man  whose 
fortune  represents  not  serving  the  pub- 
lic but  swindling  the  public.  And  again 
it  is  to  our  interest  to  discourage  the 
fortune  that  represents  service,  but  ser- 
vice overpaid  ten  or  one  hundred  times. 
So  much  for  the  men  at  the  top.  Now 
for  the  men  in  the  ranks.  What  the 
soldier — whether  he  wore  the  uniform 
of  the  Northerner  or  the  Southerner, 
whether  he  served  in  the  Federal  or  in 
the  Confederate  armies — what  the  sol- 

132 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

dier  was  concerned  with  knowing  about 
his  bunky,  about  the  man  who  stood  by 
him,  who  marched  by  him  was  not 
whether  he  was  a  banker  or  a  bricklayer 
— he  had  no  concern  as  to  whether  the 
comrade  had  much  money  or  little,  as 
to  how  he  earned  his  livlihood,  or  how 
he  worshipped  his  Creator — but  only 
whether  that  man  when  an  emergency 
came  would  "stay  put."  When  the 
fight  came  he  did  not  wish  to  have  to 
look  over  his  shoulder  to  see  if  his  com- 
rade was  still  there;  he  wished  to  be 
certain  on  that  point,  and  to  be  able  to 
devote  his  undivided  attention  to  the 
enemy.  In  camp  and  on  the  march  he 
wished  to  be  sure  that  the  man  who  was 
his  comrade  would  not  shirk  part  of  the 
job.  If  this  man  acted  up  to  the  re- 
quirements of  a  good  comrade,  if  he  was 
a  man  to  be  trusted  in  battle  and  on  the 

133 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

march,  if  he  was  a  man  who  could  be 
counted  upon  to  do  his  part  and  a  little 
more  than  his  part  in  whatever  emer- 
gency arose,  then  the  soldier  worth  his 
salt,  stood  by  his  comrade  and  recog- 
nized in  him  a  man  entitled  to  be  trusted 
in  battle  and  on  the  march.  If  the  com- 
rade was  a  man  who  could  be  counted 
upon  to  do  his  part,  and  a  little  more 
than  his  part,  in  whatever  emergency 
arose,  then  the  other  stood  by  him  and 
recognized  in  him  a  man  entitled  to 
every  demand  that  comradeship  could 
exact. 

It  should  be  just  so  in  civil  life.  Shame 
to  our  people  if  they  ever  come  to  pay 
loyalty  to  cast  or  class  ahead  of  loyalty 
to  good  citizenship.  I  have  no  patience 
with  the  man,  whether  a  multi-million- 
aire or  a  wage-worker,  whether  the 
member  of  a  big  corporation  or  the 

134 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

member  of  a  labor  union,  who  does  not 
recognize  the  fact  that  as  an  American 
citizen  his  first  loyalty  is  due  to  the 
nation,  and  to  his  fellow  citizens  no  mat- 
ter what  position  they  occupy  as  long  as 
those  fellow  citizens  are  decent  men. 
His  first  loyalty  must  be  to  the  nation 
and  to  decency  in  citizenship.  He  can- 
not be  a  good  citizen  if  he  puts  loyalty 
to  any  other  organization  above  loyalty 
to  the  nation,  if  he  puts  loyalty  to  any 
class  above  loyalty  to  good  citizenship 
as  such. 

Having  spoken  yesterday  of  the  pub- 
lic men  and  the  eighth  commandment 
today  I  speak  about  the  disseminator  of 
information  to  the  public  and  the  ninth 
commandment. 

The  public  man  occupies  a  very  im- 
portant position,  a  very  responsible  posi- 
tion. He  deserves  cordial  praise  if  he 

135 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

does  well,  and  the  heartiest  condemna- 
tion if  he  does  badly.  But  after  all,  in 
a  country  like  ours,  where  public  opinion 
rules,  he  does  not  occupy  quite  so  im- 
portant a  position  as  the  shaper  of 
public  opinion,  that  is,  as  the  man  who 
by  speech  or  writing — especially  in  the 
magazines  and  newspapers — seeks  to 
tell  his  countrymen  what  the  facts  are 
about  public  and  private  questions, 
about  public  and  private  men. 

The  cardinal  sin  of  the  public  man  is 
theft.  The  cardinal  sin  of  the  public 
writer  is  mendacity.  I  abhor  a  thief, 
and  I  abhor  a  liar  as  much  as  I  abhor  a 
thief.  I  abhor  the  assassin  who  tries  to 
kill  a  man;  I  abhor  almost  equally  the 
assassin  of  that  man's  character.  The 
infamy  of  the  creature  who  tries  to  as- 
sassinate an  upright  and  honest  public 
servant  doing  his  duty  is  no  greater  than 

136 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

the  infamy  of  the  creature  who  tries  to 
assassinate  an  honest  man's  character, 
and  who  irretrievably  damages  the  pub- 
lic by  destroying  their  faith  in  the  man 
who  should  have  their  confidence,  and 
mind  you,  when  I  speak  of  the  wrong 
done  by  this  type  of  slanderous  perverter 
of  truth,  I  wish  to  dwell  upon  the  fact 
that  I  am  not  concerned  primarily  with 
the  wrong  done  to  the  man  whom  he 
slanders.  That  is  bad  enough;  but  my 
chief  concern  is  the  wrong  he  does  to 
the  public  whom  he  teaches  to  think 
crookedly. 

The  newspaper  man  or  writer  in  a 
magazine  who  sustains  the  crook  shares 
the  crook's  guilt.  The  newspaper  which 
upholds  the  briber,  the  corrupter  of  leg- 
islators, the  man  who  buys  a  seat  in  a 
legislative  body,  or  buys  an  executive 
position — the  newspaper  man  who  up- 

137 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

holds  the  crooked  judge,  the  crooked 
legislator  or  executive  officer,  who  up- 
holds the  public  servant  who  betrays  his 
duty,  that  newspaper  writer  or  magazine 
writer  is  himself  as  guilty  morally  as  the 
man  whom  he  defends.  No  more  praise- 
worthy, no  more  indespensible  service 
can  be  rendered  than  that  of  the  man 
who  truthfully  and  fearlessly  exposes 
corruption  in  the  high  places  of  political 
and  business  life.  But  remember  also 
that  the  converse  is  true.  Evil  though 
dishonesty  is,  it  is  hardly  worse  than 
false  accusation  of  dishonesty  against 
the  honest  man.  I  am  speaking  only 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  honest  man 
who  is  falsely  accused.  The  honest  man 
of  strength  and  courage  is  probably  fair- 
ly well  able  to  take  care  of  himself. 
If  the  honest  man  is  fit  for  public  life 
he  will  have  a  fairly  thick  skin  and  will 

138 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

view  with  a  certain  grim  contempt  the 
accusations  of  the  men  who,  we  know, 
have  either  been  bought  to  accuse  him 
or  are  earning  their  livelihood  in  the 
lowest  and  meanest  of  all  ways,  by  the 
practice  of  mendacity  for  hire — and  in- 
cidentally, the  offense  is  just  as  great 
if  they  lie  to  gratify  the  spirit  of  sensa- 
tionalism as  if  they  lie  because  they  are 
bought. 

Muckrakers  who  rake  up  much  that 
ought  to  be  raked  up  deserve  well  of  the 
community  and  the  magazines  and 
newspapers  who  publish  their  writings 
do  a  public  service.  But  they  must 
write  the  truth  and  the  service  they  do 
must  be  real.  The  type  of  magazine 
which  I  condemn  is  what  may  be  called 
the  Ananias  muckraker  type.  No  paper 
bought  and  owned  by  the  special  inter- 
ests can  be  viler,  or  can  play  a  more  con- 

139 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

temptible  part  in  American  politics,  than 
the  Ananias  muckraker  type  of  maga- 
zine, the  type  of  magazine  where  the 
proprietor,  editor  and  writer  seek  to  earn 
their  livelihood  by  telling  what  they 
know  to  be  scandalous  falsehoods  about 
honest  men.  No  boodling  Alderman, 
no  convicted  private  or  public  thief  serv- 
ing his  term  in  stripes  in  the  penitentiary 
is  a  baser  and  more  degraded  being  than 
the  writers  of  whom  I  speak.  And  they 
render  this  ill  service,  this  worst  of  bad 
services  to  the  public;  they  confuse  the 
mind  of  the  public  as  between  honest 
and  dishonest  men.  Every  time  that 
an  honest  man  is  falsely  accused  of  dis- 
honesty you  give  heart  to  every  rogue. 
There  is  nothing  that  a  dishonest  man 
revels  in  more  than  a  false  accusation 
against  his  honest  compeers;  for  if  you 
attack  enough  honest  men  with  suffi- 

140 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

cient  violence  you  finally  utterly  confuse 
the  public  mind,  you  make  the  average 
decent  citizen  wholly  unable  to  tell  the 
true  attack  from  the  false,  the  honest 
public  servant  from  the  dishonest  public 
servant;  and  in  the  end  you  get  him  to 
believe  that  the  white  men  are  not  white 
and  that  the  black  men  are  not  black, 
but  that  they  are  all  gray,  and  that  it 
does  not  make  much  difference  which  of 
them  you  support. 

Such  a  feeling  is  absolutely  fatal  to 
the  achievement  of  good  citizenship.  If 
you  once  get  the  public  so  thoroughly 
confused  and  disheartened  and  skeptical 
that  on  the  one  hand  it  does  not  believe 
that  any  man  is  good,  and  on  the  other 
hand  tends  to  excuse  every  bad  man  on 
the  ground  "Oh,  well,  I  guess  he's  no 
worse  than  the  rest,  they  are  all  pretty 
bad;"  if  you  once  get  the  public  in  such 

141 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

a  frame  of  mind  you  have  done  more 
than  can  be  done  in  any  other  way  to- 
wards ruining  our  citizenship,  towards 
ruining  popular  and  governmental  hon- 
esty and  efficiency. 

I  hope  and  believe  that,  as  the  people 
at  large  more  and  more  take  into  their 
own  hands  the  shaping  of  legislation, 
and  try  to  shape  legislation  directly, 
they  will  recognize  the  fact  that  the  man 
who  poisons  their  minds  is  as  thor- 
oughly reprehensible  a  scoundrel — and 
when  I  say  scoundrel  I  am  speaking 
with  scientific  precision  and  with  moder- 
ation— as  the  man  who  poisons  their 
bodies. 

President  Wheeler  alluded  to  the  fact 
that  I  had  been  able  to  get  through  the 
Pure  Food  Law.  It  was  one  of  the 
achievements  during  my  administration 
of  which  I  felt  we  all  had  a  right  to  be 

142 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

proud.  We  got  it  through  in  the  teeth 
of  the  opposition  of  the  multitude  of 
men  who  were  making  fortunes  by  the 
sale  of  adulterated  foods,  and  who  owed 
much  of  their  wealth  to  the  fact  that  in 
the  absence  of  law  they  could  sell  their 
goods  by  a  label  which  did  not  corres- 
pond to  the  contents  of  the  package.  We 
had  to  face  the  opposition  not  only  of 
the  men  in  that  business  themselves  but 
of  the  newspapers  and  the  magazines 
which  did  the  advertising  for  that  kind 
of  business;  and  the  opposition  was  so 
powerful  that  it  was  six  years  before  I 
was  able  to  secure  the  passage  of  a  law 
which  gave  us  a  reasonable  chance  to  see 
that  if  food  was  bought  for  a  baby  the 
food  was  not  poisoned. 

Now  I  hope  in  the  end  to  see  legisla- 
tion which  will  punish  the  circulation  of 
untruth,  and  above  all  of  slanderous  un- 

143 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

truth,  in  a  newspaper  or  magazine 
meant  to  be  read  by  the  public;  which 
will  punish  such  action  as  severely  as  we 
punish  the  introduction  into  commerce 
of  adulterated  food  falsely  described  and 
meant  to  be  eaten  by  the  public. 

At  present  men  sufficiently  wealthy 
to  pay  for  slander  and  libel  and  the  other 
men  wishing  to  earn  a  base  livelihood  by 
pandering  to  the  taste  of  those  who  like 
to  read  slander  and  libel  can  undoubt- 
edly do  an  enormous  quantity  of  damage 
to  the  upright  public  servant.  But  keep 
in  mind  that  I  am  not  concerned  with 
him ;  I  am  speaking  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  public.  The  enormous  damage,  the 
incredible  damage,  is  done  to  the  public, 
by  completely  misinforming  them  as  to 
the  character  of  the  decent  public  ser- 
vant, and  also  misinforming  them  as  to 
the  character  of  that  man  in  public  life 

144 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

who  is  an  unworthy  public  servant.  I 
will  give  you  an  example  out  of  my  own 
personal  experience  during  the  last  three 
years  to  show  the  kind  of  conduct  with 
which  we  have  to  reckon  on  the  part  of 
some  of  the  newspapers. 

One  of  the  papers  of  notoriety  in  New 
York  is  the  "New  York  Herald;"  it  is 
published  by  Mr.  James  Gordon  Ben- 
nett. Whatever  distinction  it  has  is  im- 
plied in  its  being  the  founder,  the  begin- 
ner, of  the  school  of  purely  sensational 
yellow  journalism  in  New  York.  Mr. 
James  Gordon  Bennett  was  born  in 
America.  He  possesses  one  redeeming 
characteristic,  he  lives  abroad;  he  lives 
in  Paris.  While  I  was  President  and 
while  I  had  as  District  Attorney  in  New 
York  a  man  named  Harry  Stimson — 
one  of  the  best  public  servants  in  the 
country — all  kinds  of  cases  of  very  great 

145 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

importance  came  up  for  action  in  his 
district.  I  put  Harry  Stimson  in  as 
District  Attorney  because  I  knew  we 
would  have  to  take  action  against  a 
number  of  very  powerful  corporations 
and  individuals,  who  would  have  at  their 
command  the  very  best  legal  talent  that 
money  could  get.  I  wanted  to  be  sure 
that  when  the  trial  day  came  Uncle 
Sam's  man  would  be  just  as  good  as  the 
men  against  him. 

We  did  various  things.  You  may  re- 
collect that  about  eight  years  ago  they 
used  to  say  that  you  couldn't  put  a  rich 
man  in  the  penitentiary.  Well,  we  put 
several  rich  men  in  the  penitentiary. 
Harry  Stimson  put  the  wealthy  man, 
Morse,  in  the  penitentiary.  He  brought 
to  a  successful  conclusion  the  proceed- 
ings against  the  Sugar  Trust,  partly  for 
rebates  and  partly  for  swindling  the 

146 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

United  States  Government  by  debauch- 
ing Custom  House  employees;  he  re- 
covered, and  had  paid  into  the  United 
States  Treasury,  between  two  and  three 
millions  of  dollars  in  fines  from  the 
Sugar  Trust  for  its  misconduct.  (It  is 
perhaps  unnecessary  to  add  that  when 
Stimson  ran  for  Governor  last  year  the 
Sugar  Trust  and  every  kindred  business 
organization  in  Wall  Street  stated  that 
he  was  "unsafe  for  the  business  inter- 
ests"). He  conducted  several  of  such 
suits.  Among  other  matters  his  atten- 
tion was  brought  to  the  fact  that  the 
"New  York  Herald"  was  carrying  a  "per- 
sonal" column  of  the  vilest  description. 
He  sued  in  person  James  Gordon  Ben- 
nett, the  editor  and  proprietor  of  the 
"Herald"  for  violation  of  the  law  against 
circulating  obscene  literature  through 
the  mails.  Mr.  Bennett  was  living  in 

147 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

Paris.  As  soon  as  it  became  evident 
that  we  intended  to  fight  the  suit  to  a 
conclusion  it  also  became  evident  that 
we  would  obtain  the  verdict.  Every  ef- 
fort was  made  to  avoid  having  Bennett 
brought  in  person  to  New  York  City  to 
plead.  Every  species  of  pressure  and  in- 
fluence was  brought  to  bear  on  Stimson, 
and  ultimately  on  me,  to  get  Stimson  to 
permit  the  plea  to  be  entered  in  Ben- 
nett's absence  and  not  make  him  cross 
the  water.  I  speak  of  what  I  know  at  first 
hand,  when  I  say  that  every  effort  was 
made  to  obtain  this  favor;  it  was  repre- 
sented that  if  we  would  agree  to  do  this 
the  "Herald"  would  be  most  friendly 
with  us,  that  the  "Herald"  was  very  in- 
fluential, that  we  ought  not  to  anger  it, 
that  to  do  so  would  be  a  very  bad  thing 
politically,  etc.,  etc.  And  Stimson  ans- 
wered that  when  he  came  to  enforce  the 

148 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

criminal  law  he  knew  no  distinction  be- 
tween criminals,  and  that,  just  as  the 
poorest  and  most  friendless  wrongdoer 
would  have  to  appear  in  person  to  ans- 
wer to  a  criminal  charge,  so  the  editor  of 
the  greatest  and  most  wealthy  news- 
paper would  have  to  appear  in  just  the 
same  fashion.  And  Mr.  Bennett  came 
back  from  France,  crossed  the  ocean  to 
the  land  of  his  nativity,  stayed  long 
enough  to  appear  in  court  and  plead 
guilty,  and  then  went  back  to  France. 
He  paid  over  $30,000  in  fines  for  what  he 
had  done;  and  never  again  has  that  type 
of  personal  column  appeared  in  the 
"Herald." 

The  significant  thing  in  connection 
with  the  case  was  the  action  of  the  other 
New  York  papers.  They  kept  the  public 
in  ignorance  of  what  we  were  doing  with 
the  "New  York  Herald."  No  attention 

149 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

was  paid  to  the  suit  or  to  the  judgment, 
beyond  the  two  or  three  lines,  put  in 
some  obscure  part  of  the  paper,  and 
usually  with  the  names  suppressed.  The 
average  decent  citizen  was  kept  in  ig- 
norance of  what  had  occurred  and  is  to 
this  day  in  ignorance  why  the  "Herald" 
has  ever  since  followed  with  envenomed 
hostility,  not  only  the  then  administra- 
tion, but  especially  Stimson. 

Conduct  such  as  I  have  described  on 
the  part  of  the  "New  York  Herald"  is 
conduct  just  as  base  as  the  conduct  of 
the  worst  public  servant  in  any  munici- 
pality, in  any  state  or  in  the  nation  can 
possibly  be.  Conduct  such  as  that  re- 
presents the  effort  to  poison  the  sources 
of  information,  to  poison  the  minds  of 
our  people,  to  put  them  in  such  shape 
that  they  cannot  form  a  correct  opinion 
upon  the  men  who  represent  them  in 

ISO 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

public  life.  No  greater  crime  can  be 
committed  against  the  body  politic;  and 
particularly  in  this  case,  where  the  ac- 
tion that  we  took  against  the  "Herald" 
was  not  an  action  for  political  wrong 
doing;  it  was  an  action  against  the 
"Herald,"  against  Mr.  Bennett,  for  that 
species  of  crime  that  eats  into  our  vitals, 
that  eats  into  the  home  life,  that  eats 
like  an  acid  into  the  moral  fibre  of  our 
people.  Yet  the  press  and  the  magazines, 
with  but  one  or  two  exceptions,  paid  no 
attention  whatever  to  what  had  been 
done,  made  no  attempt  to  discriminate 
against  the  "Herald"  for  the  conduct  of 
which  it  had  been  guilty;  and  by  their 
silence  left  the  public  in  ignorance  so 
that  it  might  readily  fall  a  victim  to  the 
studied  and  envenomed  misrepresenta- 
tions and  falsehoods  of  the  "Herald" 
about  the  men  who  had  thus  brought  it 
to  justice. 

151 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

You  may  remember  that  a  high  officer 
of  the  Sugar  Trust  once  testified  before 
a  committee  in  Congress  that  the  Trust 
subscribed  heavily  to  campaign  commit- 
tees, and  that  it  subscribed  to  the  Re- 
publican Party  in  a  Republican  state  and 
to  the  Democratic  Party  in  a  Demo- 
cratic state.  The  Sugar  Trust  was  non- 
partisan  in  its  attitude.  In  your  turn,  I 
ask  you  people  here,  whatever  your  poli- 
tics may  be,  to  be  non-partisan  when 
the  question  of  honesty  is  involved.  A 
certain  type  of  big  corrupt  corporation 
cares  nothing  whatever  for  political  par- 
ties when  its  interests  are  at  stake;  and 
labor  unions  of  the  same  type  act  in  the 
same  fashion.  And  I  ask  the  people,  in 
their  turn,  to  pay  no  heed  to  parties 
when  the  great  fundamental  issues  of 
honesty  and  decency,  as  against  dis- 
honesty and  indecency  are  involved; 

152 


and  the  Ninth  Commandment 

only  let  them  act  in  the  reverse  way 
from  the  action  of  the  corporations  and 
unions  in  question.  When  it  comes  to 
the  question  of  a  crook  I  will  respect 
party  feeling  to  just  this  extent :  if  there 
are  two  crooks,  one  of  my  party  and  one 
of  another  party,  I  will  cinch  the  crook 
of  my  party  first  because  I  feel  a  shade 
more  responsible  for  him. 

To  you  men  here,  to  all  good  citizens, 
I  make  the  appeal  to  stand  for  honesty 
in  public  life,  and  to  stand  for  the  crea- 
tion of  an  opinion  which  shall  demand 
truth  and  decency  in  the  press  and  the 
magazines.  Do  what  you  can,  by  pri- 
vate effort,  but  especially  by  organized 
effort  and  by  pressure  upon  those  who 
are  your  representatives,  to  bring  about 
the  day  when  the  man  who  wilfully  mis- 
leads the  public,  and  wilfully  lies  to  the 
public,  on  any  question  of  interest  to  the 

153 


The  Shaping  of  Public  Opinion 

public,  shall  be  amenable — if  possible  to 
the  law,  if  not,  at  least  to  the  force  of 
public  opinion — exactly  as  if  he  were  a 
malefactor  of  any  other  kind. 

And  now,  my  friends,  in  closing  these 
five  lectures  I  wish  again  to  thank  you 
from  my  heart  for  having  come  here  and 
listened  to  me  as  you  have  listened.  I 
appreciate  it  more  than  I  can  say.  My 
plea  can  be  summed  up  in  these  words : 
I  ask  you  men  and  women  to  act  in  all 
the  relations  of  life,  in  private  life  and  in 
public  life,  in  business,  in  politics,  in 
every  other  relation,  as  you  hope  to  see 
your  sons  and  daughters  act  if  you  have 
brought  them  up  rightly  and  if  you  prize 
their  good  name  and  good  standing 
among  decent  men  and  women. 

Good-bye  and  good  luck. 


154 


A         f\  **'  '"*'  'III 


